“A lot of people didn’t really know where to put me,” says Terri now. The trouble was, her first album was so mature, no one could quite believe it could have come from a singer so young. “I was 23 but everybody thought I was about 90 the way they were going on!” Terri exclaims.

So with the debut album Untitled and its litany of plaudits in the bank, she set off for Denmark to talk ideas with her putative producers (determined to get back on the next plane if they didn’t get on) and found in the Copenhaniacs a team who are “naturally soulheads”. This hippest of production outfits have worked with Jamelia, So Solid’s Asher D, and remixed Nelly (featuring Justin Timberlake) and Mariah Carey, so they were the ideal choice to fuse the nu-soul, pop and R&B elements of Terri’s music into a super-cool but accessible soul concoction that takes no prisoners.

The result is a new album L-O-V-E that is bursting at the seams with exhilarating vocals and gargantuan grooves. Put together tracks like the mighty Hurt By Love with its clash of rock guitars and powerhouse beats, the lilting R&B title track L-O-V-E and the storming first single Whoopsie Daisy, co-written by Terri and this year’s Ivor Novello winners Remee and Cupfather & Joe (responsible for Jamelia’s Superstar), and you have an album to infect the airwaves as well as the clubs.

“I had the greatest time recording,” says Terri. “I like to write in an environment where you don’t have to think about it too much, where it should just flow.” She likens music to friendship. “You know the reason your best friend’s your best friend is because you can talk to them all day long,” she says. “With some people, you can have a bit of a weird conversation with them, and those are the relationships that don’t last. I think music is the same. When the music flows and comes naturally, you don’t have to pretend to be something that’s not really you.”

It’s probably not surprising that Terri, 25, should have slipped so easily into the cosmopolitan cool of Copenhagen and its hip production gurus. Born in London to Jamaican parents, the singer moved to Germany with her mother and stepfather at the age of four, took a boarding school education back in England – where her vocal chords had the ultimate work-out training in opera – before finally settling again in the capital to pursue her musical career.

With a classically-trained voice that could cross over into any genre, she initially wowed some of the brightest talents in the UK garage scene such as 187 Lockdown and TNT, but Terri grew up with her mum’s soul and jazz collection, and ultimately Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Chaka Khan and Aretha Franklin would be bigger influences.

So on her new album we can hear traces of those soul legends with the gorgeous ballad What The Hell, where there is a tantalising power lurking beneath her restrained, buttermilk vocal. “I don’t want to be a pop diva, I just want to do the music that I love,” says Terri. “You know, that I can listen to and touches me.”

Similarly (the odd awards ceremony aside) Terri isn’t chasing a lifestyle that will make her an instant celebrity, and you’ll find her where she feels comfortable, chilling with friends locally, or with her sister and fellow musicians at the Monday night jam sessions at London’s R&B club 10 Room.

“I’m terrible, I’m a bit of a recluse, I think,” Terri laughs. “When people see me I’m loud and brashy, but I go out once in a blue moon. The scene I go to is the kind of scene where there’s a lot of unsigned singers, just normal people.” So far, though, no one has persuaded the singer who’s brought the house down at the London Jazz Café and the Forum, not to mention venues across Europe, to get up on stage. “It’s really bad, when they call me I run away. You know, by then I’ve been drinking, and I’ll have to remember the words of the song, and I really don’t want to embarrass myself.”

Four Mobo nominations, a Mercury Prize shortlist and now a collaboration with some of the hottest producers and remixers in the world… there’s no chance of that.