Starting age 8, Lee Mulhern (his birth name) had performed as a child star prodigy covering pop and country songs on many Irish and UK radio and television shows.
At age 17, he embarked on a series of music projects like Streetwize, Streetside and Access All Areas, in a bid to be launched as an "international boy band" made up of singers from various nationalities.
After the boy band projects fell through, he relaunched a solo music career adopting the name Lee.M, and for a short time formed NXT-GEN, an electropop duo collaboration with Pete Doherty.
In 2001, at age 13, he participated in a Las Vegas New Year's Eve concert that included Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel and Neil Diamond.
Lee also joined RTÉ's Gerry Ryan at Ground Zero on 9 September when he sang "Fields of Gold" at a special wreath-laying ceremony.
[8][9] Songs from this early period performed by Mulhern include most notably "I May Be Young", "The River", "Fields of Gold" and "Bright Eyes".
At various times, he appeared on various stages with well-established artists like Daniel O'Donnell, Hugo Duncan, Brian Coll, Philomena Begley, and Michael English.
Another Streetwize member, Jonathan Fagerlund became a successful solo singer in Sweden with two albums, the single "Playing Me" and a participation in Melodifestivalen 2009 with "Welcome to My Life".
[14] The main vocalists were Lee Mulhern and Venezuelan Antonio Jones, a young singer in a popular Latin American musical formation Fuera de Clase.
Other members included Chris Johnson and Ben Hazlewood In 2009, Lee Mulhern became part of a 4-member boy band project called Access All Areas alongside former Stateside member, the Venezuelan Antonio Jones in addition to 2 new recruits, Mali-Michael McCalla, the UK X Factor Final 24 contestant from series 5 and another UK recruit Tom Pepper.
In 2012, Lee Mulhern now adopting the stage name Lee.M joined forces with Pete Doherty previously the frontman of The Libertines and also a part of the indie musical project Babyshambles.
[1][3][10][18] The opportunity for collaboration arose when Lee was spotted performing at a Kool and the Gang 60th birthday party in Orlando and was asked months later if he would be interested to do a track involving Snoop Dogg and Iyaz.
The latter also included a new version of "Cotton Eye Joe", a Rednex global hit two decades earlier, based on a 200-year-old traditional instrumental song.