Hip-hop has been the guiding light of my life as a musician and a music fan. It's the one common thread through all of it from the time I bought my first record probably. It's always been there.

Its always important to fall back on your instincts and core beliefs and that was pretty hard for me to do but trusting in my self the way I trusted that if I were to sit at a piano for two hours and I was going learn something, that trust I'd put in myself really helped me get through it. For five to six months I just wrote songs and believed they would turn out to be things I could be proud of and be happy.

The hip-hop aesthetic and the way it's produced always motivated me. Alongside that I was still wanting to make great traditional songs because I've never had any desire to rap. My love of hip-hop is driven by my love of rappers, but it was built out of my love of producers.

I feel the reasons my songs might seem dark is because of how I viewed the situations I was in and it was just something I always felt like documenting.

With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.

I have some vivid memories of walking around as a child with a cassette tape.

I moved to London with this really warped sense of expectation.