I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.

If you want to be good at anything, you have to work hard at it. It doesn't just fall from the sky. I work every day at trying to improve my writing, and I really enjoy it. Nothing fascinates me more than putting words together, and seeing how a collection of words can produce quite a profound effect.

But even when I do give interviews, I always come across as such a completely different person. It seems like there's no controlling it anyway.

I like to be around things that I find inspiring.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

It [ "Not For Long"] was the biggest song that I've had, and I actually heard it on the radio multiple times.

What Rare [albom] allows me to do is gonna show people other things that I'm capable of 'cause they really haven't heard a lot of things outside of the rap stuff that I do.