With homogenized culture, even if you feel frustrated, you'd have to write a Taylor Swift song to get heard..

Besides, isn't it more exciting when you don't have permission?.

I feel like I'm living in the dead weeds of hip-hop. I live in the graveyard of what went wrong with hip-hop..

Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?.

Instead of going to war, we should put the money into arts and culture and let creative people define what Britain is..

I'm not sticking up for white kids - I'm going to have a barrage of hate mail - but it's true. If you're poor, you're really poor..

There's a bit of hope that a song can be about anything. If you want to write a song about anything, you can, and you don't have to put it through th….

I find the new Justin Bieber video more violent and more of an assault to my eyes and senses than what I've made..

I hate the idea of street art. With music, I just needed my brain and my voice, which didn't cost anything..

Music that was made in the 60s and 70s did come from a really soulful place. The seed for the songs written in the 90s were planted in those songs, e….

I feel so terrible for the kids now. In London, even people in their forties can't afford to buy a house or have kids..

I never pigeonholed myself - the only reason you'd want to pigeonhole is to monetize your business and, as a person, I don't see the importance of do….

Confidence takes constant nurturing, like a bed, it must be remade every day..

People say we're similar with Lady Gaga, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the….

Culturally, I found myself in a very weird situation: you were the person that had made that journey to the West, and then you were going back to com….

In the beginning [of my career] I definitely felt a responsibility because I was representing a bunch of people [Sri lankans] who never got represent….

Creativity needs time to harness before it goes out, and because that's difficult, memes have become the creative language..

I wanted to represent a different decade, and I wanted someone who goes back further than me. I go back the furthest on this thing, I never really no….

My experience has to be funnelled through a black experience or a white experience, or it doesn't exist, because that's how we're going to deal with ….

That's what's inspiring to me - finding someplace where people haven't already seen themselves in a certain light..

Now, [hip-hop/grime artists] Stormzy, Skepta, or the Section Boyz have to be validated by Drake, Rihanna or Beyoncé. They're rolled into this one urb….