I think a black man, purple man, Martian man can run the country... as long as he does right by the people.

Politicians... say what they say - you might get every now and again a genuine one, innit? But I think people, like, as a whole make the difference.

I think it don't matter what colour you are, it matters what colour your heart is and your intentions.

Every summer in my old area, Bow, these kids from across the road used to bring out quad bikes in the park. They let me have a go, and I don't know what was wrong with me, but I drove straight into a gate and fractured my big toe. I had this mad limp for ages.

For a bit I was going mad trying to do martial arts twice a week and go to the gym and do weights, but that can make you ill if you balance it with flying around and living like I do, so I narrowed it down.

I just go to the gym once every few weeks and go training once or twice a week. But it's all pretty random.

If you are going to work, you might as well follow your heart, because nothing in life is easy and if it's going to be hard, it might as well be what you really want.

I come from the underground, from the ground.

I come from nothing, man.

I always put people with my kind of background first.

I grew up and learnt to hold my own. My mum was doing two people's jobs. It makes you grow up early. There's less people to talk to, less close people, innit? You're going to end up being lonely because you think a bit more.

Where I'm from, there ain't a lot of other options, you know what I'm saying? Entertainment or football or crime. I don't want to spread the message that all you can do is music or sport. You can be anything. Anything. That's the message I like to spread.

In the end, music was the only option open to me. It was a blessing I pursued it. I put all my energies into it. I didn't care about no other subjects.

Even I find myself boring sometimes.

I'm definitely not proud of some of the stuff I did as a youth, but that's where my mind-frame was at one point in my life, and I can't pretend those things didn't happen. I'm not glorifying them, I'm trying to make them into art.

America is the land of the hustler: it's bigger, bolder, flasher, more in your face, whereas England's more about attention to detail - trying to be refined and classy, and I think a lot of people in the urban scene in this country have had trouble accepting that.

Hip hop is the way it is because of America.

School would have been pretty dead really for me without music. I liked IT, and English was all right, but that was it.

I don't really class myself as a musician, I can make music but I'm not the greatest technically. There were other people who were technically better than me in school but I knew how I wanted to sound and all I needed was to work out how to do it.

People can't look down on grime anymore, it's an established British genre.

People talk about the pop part - they don't talk about me being an independent artist. I made it look easy, that's the problem!

I dominated the underground and then I dominated the overground, and I did that on my own.

No U.K. rapper has been in my position; there are loads of big rappers like Tinie Tempah or Skepta, but no one has done what I have: had mainstream success with underground music and pop music.

I'm not gonna lie; I don't always like everything about Bow and I don't always like everyone in Bow and they don't always like me but on the whole I love where I come from. I'm proud of where I come from and I'm proud to represent that area.

I learned to MC over drum 'n' bass music.

I grew up on the pirate radio scene which started out as drum 'n' bass music. U.K. garage picked up and got bigger on the back end of that.

When you hear 'I Luv U,' that's me doing Three 6 Mafia. That actual track is a mix of 'What's Your Fantasy?' by Ludacris and 'Is That Yo Chick?' by Jay Z. That's my version of that track.

NME is normally associated with indie rock. It ain't something I read as a kid.

The world's a jungle in my eyes, innit? Everything's tribal. If you see someone who don't look like you - especially the colour of your skin - you're going to be suspicious, or not as welcoming or warming, innit? I've learned not to take it too personal.

I'm an entertainer.

My London is racy. Hyper. Unpredictable. Uncontrollable. Er. Intense.

I like staying in. I'm that kind of guy.

I was making grime before anyone else.

I think there's loads of undiagnosed depression where I came from. Post-traumatic stress disorder as well. Some of the things you see as a kid are like the things you'd expect to see in a war zone, but there's no one to talk to about it because running to a psychiatrist ain't the thing.

Grime 4 Corbyn? I just don't know what I'm supposed to feel about that - does he even listen to grime?

I don't like to be picked on. Growing up where I did you learn to fight.

I'm not really going to defend anyone's lyrics.

As a kid, I felt I had it bad - and people where I came from did - but if I'd been in a similar position in America, it could've been 10 times worse. We have the NHS. We don't have slums like I've seen in the Deep south, or shocking intolerance.

Some people will never let the grime thing go, but my fifth album is not meant to sound like my first album.

There's a real gun culture in the U.K., for those who don't know. It's very real.

I'm not afraid to embrace different music and different culture and put it in the music.

There's things that I say that people wouldn't say. And just putting across my vulnerability as a person in my music as well. A lot of people wouldn't do that, everyone wants to be hard.

Everything kind of happened like: 'Bam!' for me. One minute I was living on a council estate somewhere, then I won the Mercurys, then all of a sudden press and people were in my face.

I take risks.

When you're doing things like Glastonbury main stage, and there's 80,000 people and your hits are going off, it's at those moments you sit back and breathe and take it in, man, cos it might never happen again.

I'd done plenty of dark stuff and edgy stuff and hardcore stuff, and I kind of found that stuff easy.

No one can establish what selling out is.

I see all that celebrity stuff now as whatever, man. What's more important is that everyday people are liking my music, it's got to that stage. I've worked really hard for a long time for it to come to this point, where I'm putting smiles on people's faces, and I'm loving it.

My first school is gone - turned into flats.

In Miami, there's a buzz there, everyone out there's partying - it's crazy.