Musician

Some people don't want to be helped, they want to do what they're doing, it's all they know.

I'll never run out of things to rap about. Sometimes you sit there and think, 'I can't do it, I can't do it.' Then something happens and you start writing.

I'm not gonna lie; I don't always like everything about Bow and I don't always like everyone in Bow and they don't always like me but on the whole I love where I come from. I'm proud of where I come from and I'm proud to represent that area.

People can't look down on grime anymore, it's an established British genre.

My London is racy. Hyper. Unpredictable. Uncontrollable. Er. Intense.

Sometimes you might get inspired by something, write about it, then later that lyrics sounds better on another beat. That's happened a few times. Like 'Dance Wiv Me' - those lyrics didn't start on that beat.

Hip hop is the way it is because of America.

All that really moves me is music.

If you are going to work, you might as well follow your heart, because nothing in life is easy and if it's going to be hard, it might as well be what you really want.

Where I'm from, there ain't a lot of other options, you know what I'm saying? Entertainment or football or crime. I don't want to spread the message that all you can do is music or sport. You can be anything. Anything. That's the message I like to spread.

School would have been pretty dead really for me without music. I liked IT, and English was all right, but that was it.

I'm from east London.

I dominated the underground and then I dominated the overground, and I did that on my own.

When you're doing things like Glastonbury main stage, and there's 80,000 people and your hits are going off, it's at those moments you sit back and breathe and take it in, man, cos it might never happen again.

People classify things and that's fair enough. But if somebody wants to make something different, that doesn't make them any less of an artist.

I grew up and learnt to hold my own. My mum was doing two people's jobs. It makes you grow up early. There's less people to talk to, less close people, innit? You're going to end up being lonely because you think a bit more.

My first school is gone - turned into flats.

My fans are lunatics. I encourage mosh pits, I encourage lunacy, I make music to let go to.

I swear too much.

America is the land of the hustler: it's bigger, bolder, flasher, more in your face, whereas England's more about attention to detail - trying to be refined and classy, and I think a lot of people in the urban scene in this country have had trouble accepting that.