Music is something that should speak for itself, straight from the heart. It took me a long time to understand that.

The cartoon is a metaphor really for the fact that it's almost impossible in our celebrity obsessed culture to move around genres and sort of change you ideas, change your face, you know?

The whole Gorillaz concept is one for mavericks; it's a way for people who never have a chance to work together being able to ally behind the cartoons.

I'm an English songwriter/composer, working in Mandarin and trying to find something about Chinese culture that I really relate to and respect and feel some genuine emotions for - and it's quite hard, the pentatonic scale, and that, in a way, is why I think it works. Because I'm forced to limit myself to quite strict rules about what I did. Maybe that's how I avoided pastiche.

I've always known I'm incredibly special. All my life. You know? It's not a big deal.

The best way to get to know Africa is to go there and see what it is. To know somewhere that crazy and that magnificent, you have to spend some time among people, the rhythm of their lives.

I can't be bothered anymore about giving songs titles.