I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up.

A lot of the people I was writing with think a lot more about lyrics and a lot more about the details from the beginning. That kind of thinking made me a little self-conscious because I was suddenly having to judge what I was doing early on in the process.

What I love about African-African music is how unselfconscious it is in so many ways.

A lot of my ideas come from McNally Jackson bookstore. One of my favorite things to do is just go there and look through architecture books and interior design books. Something about the aesthetics of space and beautiful images works with my brain.

An opened mind will eventually lead to a more well rounded artist and this will thus heightenen his or her level of professionalism.

I had my first exhibition in September, 2012. This was when I first introduced the public to my style of the incorporation of cloth in my paintings. It was well received and everyone was fascinated with the work on display. I also invited other young aspiring artist to display they work which was also well received.

I met the guys at HeavyRoc through the drummer in St. Lucia, Nick Brown. He is Ben from The Knocks' cousin, and at the time we'd been doing some work together, but everything was still very much in the unsure developmental phase (even though I'd been in it for a year and a half). I told him that if he was going to play the music for anyone that he shouldn't say anything about it and should just play it and see if anyone says anything, and he did it one day at their studio and they loved it and got it touch.