When I was growing up, it was still during Apartheid, so the country was very shielded from the outside artistic world. Anything that was too subversive was basically banned. All the music that we got from outside of South Africa was the poppiest, least subversive music that you could get.

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.

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.

You may be surprised to know that growing up, I wanted to be a writer of children's books.

Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for anyone who has the nerve to even attempt to do music today, but this is just about what excites me.

When I was 10 I went to the Drakensberg Boys Choir School, which is this idyllic Harry Potter-esque music boarding school in the mountains in South Africa, and that's when everything started to change for me and I realised that music is my thing.

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