No matter where I went, there was someone rejecting my ideology. What was interesting was these reactions made me want to do it even more because we had smoothed over that void, smoothed over what was missing. After all, our motto was, "A happy face, a thumping bass, for a loving race."

We were being put somewhere interesting from being involved with analog, to working with digital. Those two worlds just collided and it felt great! That was probably the key inspiration in terms of me going on to not just making dub plates for my sound, but doing the unobvious and "selling out" to the masses. I subsequently got a record deal because of that.

No matter where I went, there was someone rejecting my ideology. What was interesting was these reactions made me want to do it even more because we had smoothed over that void, smoothed over what was missing. After all, our motto was, "A happy face, a thumping bass, for a loving race."

Black musicians were either trying to be American or trying to play down their Caribbean roots.

I just think giving back is in tandem with the way in which I was raised, with the, 'It takes a village to raise a child' mentality. Sometimes with the knowledge you have, you just don't know how powerful it is. I think I'm in a reasonably interesting position to recognise that. Plus we're now living in a completely different time to the one in which I grew up in. Because of my peers as well, it's the whole reason I'm doing what I'm doing. In terms of putting things back into the community, it's almost like running my sound system again.

I think the production thing was a stroke of luck really. But for me, I had to do it, as it was always part of the plan. But my biggest claim to fame was to recognize those who were at the time unrecognised. Soul II Soul was like a festival to all these artists who wanted to be a part of it. We travel to all these different destinations and everyone gets off where they need to.

Personally I was just sick of the mimicry of American culture that was going on because it wasn't natural for us. We had grown up listening to reggae music in our communities. People were enjoying what we were doing with out music - we didn't have to work to sell it to them.