D'Angelo could sing the phonebook and it would sound good.

I didn't start making music in order to be famous.

I had a somewhat frenetic childhood because my mum and dad split up when I was five, and then my mum remarried.

Making music is a lifestyle; go to the studio and sit in front of your computer, drum machine or guitar for 10 hours a day. The good stuff will come.

So sometimes if I'm working with a rapper, like Ghostface Killah or Nas, producing usually means, in hip-hop, that you make the music. You make the beat, and you give it to them. And they write the rhymes.

You just pick up a little bit of whatever the ones you think are appropriate, and you try and, you know, combine them. And then you bring in other people that are great for the things that you're not so good at.

My mother was pretty strict. I hated it, but maybe it made me a bit more sensible.