English urban artists were very used to making secondhand American music, and I thought that was boring.
I'm not just looking to be famous and attach myself to famous names. I want to make history in the business in terms of creativity.
When I listen to a Coldplay record, you're gonna hear an indie band, and you know that's what you're gonna get from Coldplay. With myself, I'm not sure it's the same.
It's a lot easier producing for people or being in the background, and they can take all the fire from the front. But in order to express the ideas that I have without any kind of contamination, I thought it would be a cool thing to be out front.
I definitely didn't wanna be a one-dimensional artist that you can just put into one box. Because, to me, we're all masters of certain energies, and we all create different colours.
My ethos is musical freedom: to create whatever I want.
I try as much I can after every live performance to read all the comments my fans post on Facebook and Twitter, as this helps enormously for me to understand straight from fans what worked and what didn't.
I grew up not really having a father figure, and it didn't bother me, because he wasn't there in the first place. But then he started other families, and I was jealous. It was like he was happy without our family.
My brothers came home with country, jazz, everything... it was always very normal to me to make any type of music. It was possible to fuse all the sounds, so it never sounded confusing to me to mix jazz and dubstep.
As a breed, I think artists are never 100% satisfied with their work, and we will always want that little bit of extra time to put the final gloss on it.
I don't think about the success that I've had - I've had a lot of success with music - but I always look at it like it's a new day.
I don't ever think it's a good idea to try to recreate the success you've had before; it's all about chasing something fresh and new.
I'm all for trying anything once; otherwise, you end up like David Guetta - reproducing the same formula over and over.
