Since they formed five years ago, FLO have really learned the value of strength in numbers. “When one person says something, usually it’s not taken seriously, but when the other two [members] back it up, it’s undeniable,” says Renée Downer, one third of the London-based girl group. As the interview progresses, it becomes clear that FLO’s united front has been key to executing their musical vision on their own terms.
At this point in their career, “London-based” almost feels like a technicality: the trio have spent “less than seven” nights at home in two months. FLO – Downer, Jorja Douglas and Stella Quaresma – spent September and October supporting R&B queen Kehlani on her ‘Crash’ US tour. “It was great practice performing for people who aren’t there for you,” says Downer to an echo of “yeah!” from her bandmates, “though we saw quite a lot of FLO fans”.
When NME speaks to the trio, it’s just four days before they drop their sparkling debut album ‘Access All Areas’. They’re deep into promo mode and hardly thrown by a question about whether it was “difficult” to delay the album from its planned late-2023 release. “We had to put the music first,” Downer says. “Are we going to put out something that’s not ready when we know we can do better, or are we going to take time to make it what it needs to be?”
‘Access All Areas’ has proven to be worth the wait. Gliding from the sassy trap of current single ‘In My Bag’ to the gleaming R&B of ‘Check’ and balmy balladry of ‘Shoulda Woulda Coulda’, it’s a poised, polished affair that shows off the trio’s show-stopping vocals. “We had to believe in every song,” Douglas says. “The statement we want to make is that we’re here to stay.”
FLO may project serenity, but their schedule is so hectic right now that they take this interview while travelling “in our little van” to Nottingham for an in-store gig. Their phone camera is switched off, which is disappointing but understandable. If Destiny’s Child had been around in the Zoom era, would they have shown themselves stuck in traffic on the M1?
They won’t mind this comparison to Beyoncé, Kelly and Michelle. ‘Access All Areas’ begins with a shimmering ‘Intro’ in which Wicked actress Cynthia Erivo declares that “this tenacious trio of talented young ladies” are “ready to receive the baton passed on by the likes of Destiny’s Child, the Sugababes [and] SWV”.
Why did they single out these particular girl-groups? “Their technical ability is definitely something that we admire, especially Destiny’s Child – they never seemed to have a bad day,” says Downer. “We’re still trying to get there!” adds Quaresma with a laugh.
FLO have been grafting tirelessly to “get there” since 2019, when they were put together by Rob Harrison, an A&R manager at Island Records (The Last Dinner Party, ArrDee). Downer and Quaresma already knew each other from their days at London’s Sylvia Young Theatre School, which counts Amy Winehouse and Daniel Kaluuya among its alumni, and both of them recognised Douglas from social media.
“Demanding control from the beginning makes us feel less manufactured”
The trio don’t seem to mind being called a “manufactured band”, but neither do they feel it’s entirely accurate. “Knowing each other or knowing of each other before we were put in the group made the process so much easier,” Downer says. “And I guess having – demanding – control from the beginning makes us feel less manufactured.”
This is where that strength in numbers has come in. When they launched publicly in 2022 after three years of behind-the-scenes groundwork, they had to lobby Island to release ‘Cardboard Box’ as their debut single. The trio wrote the breezy R&B-pop number with artist-producer MNEK (Little Mix, Beyoncé), who became such a trusted collaborator that he exec-produced their debut album. “He’s kind of the fourth member,” Douglas says.
“The label saw it as a song that we could work towards, but we saw it as an amazing song that we could work from,” Douglas says smoothly – they’ve told this story before. FLO got their way and were validated when ‘Cardboard Box’ gained traction on social media (SZA shared it on her Instagram Story) and achieved a silver certification for 200,000 UK sales.
When FLO spoke to NME for the first time in April 2022, a month after ‘Cardboard Box’ dropped, Downer said: “We’re not going to be pushed over or go with someone else’s decision without believing in it ourselves.” Two-and-a-half years later, are they fully steering the ship?
“It’s a constant battle, Nick,” Downer says with mock theatricality. “Every day we’re faced with a new obstacle, but how we’ve adapted as individuals and as a group has made the obstacles much easier to overcome. We know what to expect now and how to get the best out of a situation.”
Douglas says this battle is rooted in the fact that “the UK doesn’t really understand R&B music or how to push it”. Early on, FLO were “absolutely” encouraged to switch towards other, supposedly more commercial genres, something they didn’t mind the odd “dip into”.
“[But] I think the main thing,” Douglas continues, “is R&B isn’t necessarily associated with, like, the highest marketing and the highest quality assets. There has to be a certain quality to [our] artwork and shoots and merch, which I think is a quality that [the industry thinks] more lends itself to pop music and mainstream music.”
The trio appear to address this on the album’s hard-hitting closing track ‘I’m Just A Girl’. “How many Black girls do you see on centre stage now? Yet you wonder why thеy’re going to the States now,” Quaresma sings on the second verse. In 2019, the year that FLO formed, British R&B singer Ella Mai spoke about a “ceiling” for artists working in this genre in the UK and said: “I don’t know the last time an R&B artist was recognised at the Brits.”
FLO have since helped to chip away at this ceiling by winning the Brit Award for Rising Star in 2023. “We’re getting more respected in the UK, and we definitely want our album to do that a bit more,” Quaresma says. “But Black music, I guess, aside from rap really does flourish better in the US. That’s just a fact.”
Since then, their progress has been steady rather than spectacular. In March 2023, they dropped ‘Fly Girl’, a sleek reimagining of Missy Elliott‘s 2002 banger ‘Work It’ that featured a verse from Misdemeanor herself. It stormed into the UK Top 40 and became their second most streamed single to date behind ‘Cardboard Box’.
No subsequent FLO single has matched its success, though album standouts ‘On & On’ and ‘Woulda Coulda Shoulda’ are easily strong enough to scale the charts. But crucially, FLO have already built a fanbase who are invested (and brave) enough to email their management with notes for future live shows.
“I think most were valid,” Douglas says candidly. “At first we just wanted to focus on our vocals. But obviously there are so many elements that go into putting a show together, like choreography, movement, stage design.” With this in mind, fans can expect levelled up production values next March when FLO play their biggest headline tour yet, including a hometown show at London’s 5,000-capacity O2 Academy Brixton.
But above all, FLO are moving in the right direction because they have the confidence to carve out their own lane. Most songs on their album run three minutes and over, so clearly they don’t self-edit to suit the brevity-focused Spotify and TikTok algorithms. “We’re making real music, so it’s never going to be fleeting,” Downer says.
The same could be said of FLO, who are on a long-term mission to become the UK’s preeminent girl group. Or as Downer puts it: “We’re here to clear the drought.”
‘Access All Areas’ by FLO is out now on Spotify, Apple Music and more via Island.