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I'm not just looking to be famous and attach myself to famous names. I want to make history in the business in terms of creativity.
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I know this sounds weird, but I honestly believe music comes from the universe. Inspiration comes from the universe, and you drag it into your mind.
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I never called myself an urban artist, but that's what I was classed as, and I almost tried to live up to the name instead of who I really was.
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I have learned that while your putting your record together you can get so caught up in making what you want that you forget what you wanted in the first place.
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I really enjoy 'festival life,' as it were, and I love the reactions when I bring out my guitar on stage. The crowd are always a bit like, 'What the hell is this urban guy doing with a guitar,' and that's what I love - the shock element of it all!
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Of course, success takes you where your character can't sustain you.
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My mother brought up nine children, in Hackney, and none of us are criminals, none of us in jail. Her strength made me who I am today.
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I grew up not really having a father figure, and it didn't bother me, because he wasn't there in the first place. But then he started other families, and I was jealous. It was like he was happy without our family.
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You can make what you want. People care about what the artist has to say, what the sound is, and how it affects them.
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Urban is not actually my world. It was me trying something out, basically. I come from a gospel background.
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I have to be honest: I think production is mad - exciting - because, of course, you're creating the record. When you're a singer, you're just singing. Creating the music, directing, and seeing where it's gonna go in production is very, very exciting.
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I definitely didn't wanna be a one-dimensional artist that you can just put into one box. Because, to me, we're all masters of certain energies, and we all create different colours.
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You get so close to your own music that you can't see the beauty in it. I had to learn to let go. It's good to be less precious.
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I'm a perfectionist, and to actually finish something is good for me.
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I'm from Hackney, and it's an area that is not so pretty, and we have a different way of expressing ourselves than somebody from uptown that has lots of money.
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I'm a musical geek. It's like there's this big, wild universe in my head, and I love to express it.
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I don't want to be someone that, when people look back, they think, 'Yeah, cool, he made us jump around for a bit in 2010.'
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I remember my brother came home with a bass and played a blues solo on it. I just went insane for days afterwards learning that.
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I need to make money, but I don't want to be another guy selling his McDonald's to the pop market.
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I don't think about the success that I've had - I've had a lot of success with music - but I always look at it like it's a new day.
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When I listen to a Coldplay record, you're gonna hear an indie band, and you know that's what you're gonna get from Coldplay. With myself, I'm not sure it's the same.
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As a breed, I think artists are never 100% satisfied with their work, and we will always want that little bit of extra time to put the final gloss on it.
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My ethos is musical freedom: to create whatever I want.
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My brothers came home with country, jazz, everything... it was always very normal to me to make any type of music. It was possible to fuse all the sounds, so it never sounded confusing to me to mix jazz and dubstep.