Irini Toufexis was born in Cyprus in 1971 and at the age of 3 emigrated with her family to London. From a very young age she used to write songs and at the age of 15 she received a scholarship to study song at the Pimlico Institute. In the same year Irini met Everton McCalla (‘Light Of The World’s drummer and songwriter). His home/studio was in the same neighbourhood, Stamford Hill, and they started to do some songs together.
At the age of 16 Irini was ‘discovered’ as a model, and signed a contract with a modelling agency. She appeared in adverts by Vidal Sasoon, did various ‘cat walk’ shows and was featured as a dancer in a number of famous video clips. In the process she was spotted in one of these clips by the Martin Levitt, a well known music manager. Levitt’s company offered Irini a recording contract and toured all over the United Kingdom, released her first single and was featured on the chart topping song ‘Push The Beat’ by Capella.Despite these early breaks some things were not going right. Irini’s artistic freedom was very limited through the management deal, she became like a number in a machine and felt her individuality as an artist was being limited.As an escape from this process Irini started to develop more as a singer/songwriter and began to achieve many things. From the early 1990’s events moved at a faster pace. The first solo single ‘24/7 Love’ came about through collaboration with her sister Marina. The plan was for a guest singer to do the vocal. Fortunately the singer ended up missing the session so the producer asked Irini to sing as a replacement. The result became a big hit on the UK soul scene and topped the charts for several weeks. Just before this happened Irini’s family had emigrated to Cyprus, and she soon joined them. Not knowing what was actually happening back in London the phones began to ring constantly in the quiet village of Lythrodontas. Flying back to London to do some promotional work for the single the singer soon found out that she had reached the top of the charts and was doing PA's with many top UK soul and reggae artists.As recognition of her achievements Irini was awarded best female newcomer at the British Black Music Industry Awards in 1993. This was a first for an artist of Cyprus origin in the UK.However this did not bring the just rewards as the music business can be full of many ups and downs. In all fairness ‘24/7 Love' should have entered the national charts in a bigger way. It sold in excess of 20,000 copies and this was without a video clip and a minimal promotional budget. Similar things happened to her second single 'Don't Let Them Know', a number 1 in the UK Soul Charts.Following this, with dedication and production skills from Eric Pascal of New Shoes and Socks, Irini realized every new artist's most cherished dream - recording and releasing a debut LP. 'Don't Make Me Wish' came out in 1995 featuring an array of new soul tunes by Irini, one cover - the Stephanie Mills tune, 'Keep Away Girls' - one of Irini's favourite female singers. The LP also included all of the singles with some remixes added as bonus tracks.Various producers and dj's, without any credit being granted to the original songwriters also illegally sampled many of Irini's songs in genres such as dance/house and jungle. Listening to many of these tunes the singer was livid as her voice had been pitched like some 'looney tunes' classic remix. Just do a search on the net and you will find many illegal remixes of 24/7 Love and Don't Let Them Know. All of these have been released entirely without the singer's consent.Things began to get stressful and affected her physical health. For periods of time parts of her body would go numb. Despite extensive tests doctors could not detect any illness.It was time to take a break from things. Irini went to Cyprus to re-join her family. A short time after in 1996 she was diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis) - a fact that was to change her life. As she states herself “I am determined to fight the disease and reach my goals as a singer and songwriter- I will not let MS beat me!â€Over the last few years Irini has returned to writing songs and collaborations with various people such as Haji Mike and Tony Matthew. With a vast book of love songs the original queen of 24/7 soul is now back in action.
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