Dappy given music lifeline

N-Dubz star Dappy believes he would have ended up “dead or in jail” if hadn’t become a music star.

The rapper got mixed up with the wrong sort of people when he was a teenager and started to experiment with drugs and was involved in a gang.

But his late father, Mungo Jerry bassist Byron Contostavlos, turned him away from a life of crime and got him focused on his music.

Dappy – who along with his bandmates Tulisa and Fazer named their debut album ‘Uncle B’, his dad’s nickname, in honour of Byron - said: “If I weren’t in N-Dubz I’d say I’d either be dead or in jail – one of the two if I never got involved with music.

“When I was a teenager I was getting up to all sorts to make money. Then I had a scare and realised I could go to prison for years.

“It was my dad who caught me – and it was him who pushed me to make the better choice. He would come into my room and find me with serious drugs or maybe some sort of weapon and shout at me. I was 16.

“He said, ‘What are you going to do with that in your hand? You don’t need that. You are going to go down.’ Instead he drove me to his little recording studio in north-west London, in his old green van. My dad always helped us so much, always sending off tapes to record companies every month. He knew we were going to make it.”

Dappy – real name Dino Contostavlos – regrets his behaviour not only because it was wrong but because it caused his mother Zoi so much heartache.

In new book ‘N-Dubz: Against All Odds’, he recalls: “I wanted to make them proud and I didn’t want to make my mum cry any more. Sometimes there were nights when my mum would be crying and begging me not to go out – by I ignored her. I just wanted to get my own money and pay for my own things. I didn’t really see I was making her an emotional wreck when I used to get into trouble with the police.”