All of my stuff is raw, it's emotive, it's real.

Stuff like Buena Vista Social Club and Fela Kuti were quite a main thing to my childhood. As soon as I reached an age where I realized that Fela was singing in English, when I got past his accent, I loved the rawness of it, and the funk and the rhythm and the melody.

Because the Internet's there, I have access to a lot of the legends, like Fela Kuti. I used to watch a lot of Fela Kuti videos, just to see how he performed. He inspired me a lot, actually, because he was a man of many words, many good words.

I got a lot from my uncle who is a really good ska guitarist. Very ragged makeshift rhythms and intricate lines.

My mum used to work in New York in Spike Lee's shop; she did the outfits for the video for P.M. Dawn's 'Set Adrift on Memory Bliss.'

I went through quite a few establishments that maybe weren't great for myself - security units, youth-offender places. I guess that was going to the lions' den. Social services said, 'You've got to go to some sort of school.'