TO see her these days with all her glamour, dressing up for magazine photoshoots it is hard to believe Sonique could hide her feminine charms.
 But in a past life it was crucial for the DJ-singer to erase her sexuality to get on in the male-dominated club culture. "I never cared about what I looked like," she says of her early club career. "I deliberately taped down my breasts so they wouldn't move and I wore army trousers all the time. "I'm more girlified now and I can already see some are distracted by me showing a sexual side." She may have succumbed to the image-making of the music industry but the multi-award winner prefers to let her music speak for itself. "All you need to do is make good music, that's what makes people happy." Sonique's breakthrough hit It Feels So Good in 2000 was testament to that approach. The emotionally-charged track was huge in the US before she had even begun promoting herself in the UK. Discovered by a Florida radio DJ the first 10,000 copies disappeared instantly with the single going on to reach No.1 in the UK and notch up four times platinum sales. "It just had a life of its own," she says. Despite appearances though Sonique was no overnight sensation, she was writing music in her teens, worked with Bomb the Bass and was for a time frontwoman for Mark Moore's dance act SExpress. Then of course were the DJ years, where she achieved legendary female status in a man's world, singing to the crowds over the tracks and a part of her career she refuses to give up. Sonique says her songs reflect her life and she certainly has plenty of material. Growing up in North London as Sonia Clarke she lived on the streets for a time and her profesional singing career has also been tinged with sadness. At the height of It Feels So Good's success and with a debut album Hear My Cry underway she lost the baby boy she was carrying eight months into her pregnancy. The tragedy became the inspiration for her follow-up hit Sky which charted at No.2. Sonique stresses that her latest album Born To Be Free is free of some of the agression that spilled onto her first. "It didn't really affect this album," she says of her loss."This album was all about love which I had not felt for a while because I had been busy feeling pain. " * Sonique plays in Liverpool at the exclusive Tia Maria Mixology party at Mosquito on Wednesday June 18. | 
