NME is normally associated with indie rock. It ain't something I read as a kid.

When you hear 'I Luv U,' that's me doing Three 6 Mafia. That actual track is a mix of 'What's Your Fantasy?' by Ludacris and 'Is That Yo Chick?' by Jay Z. That's my version of that track.

I grew up on the pirate radio scene which started out as drum 'n' bass music. U.K. garage picked up and got bigger on the back end of that.

I learned to MC over drum 'n' bass music.

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.

No U.K. rapper has been in my position; there are loads of big rappers like Tinie Tempah or Skepta, but no one has done what I have: had mainstream success with underground music and pop music.

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

People talk about the pop part - they don't talk about me being an independent artist. I made it look easy, that's the problem!

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

I don't really class myself as a musician, I can make music but I'm not the greatest technically. There were other people who were technically better than me in school but I knew how I wanted to sound and all I needed was to work out how to do it.

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

Hip hop is the way it is because of America.

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.

I'm definitely not proud of some of the stuff I did as a youth, but that's where my mind-frame was at one point in my life, and I can't pretend those things didn't happen. I'm not glorifying them, I'm trying to make them into art.

Even I find myself boring sometimes.

In the end, music was the only option open to me. It was a blessing I pursued it. I put all my energies into it. I didn't care about no other subjects.

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.

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.

I always put people with my kind of background first.

I come from nothing, man.

I come from the underground, from the ground.

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.

I just go to the gym once every few weeks and go training once or twice a week. But it's all pretty random.

For a bit I was going mad trying to do martial arts twice a week and go to the gym and do weights, but that can make you ill if you balance it with flying around and living like I do, so I narrowed it down.