Dizzee Rascal Quotes

In each genre, I've been around the biggest. In pop I toured with Justin Timberlake, with reggae it was Sean Paul; I toured with Jay-Z and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's all an education for me, to see how they do it. People who criticise me are just jealous. My London is racy. Hyper. Unpredictable. Uncontrollable. Er. Intense. All that really moves me is music. I'm not afraid to embrace different music and different culture and put it in the music. 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. Some people will never let the grime thing go, but my fifth album is not meant to sound like my first album. London's where I grew up and had most of my experiences. I was making grime before anyone else. I actually really like DJ Assault - a Detroit a ghetto tech DJ, who's produced good music that's influenced me a bit. I just go to the gym once every few weeks and go training once or twice a week. But it's all pretty random. I like to work with the best artists, full stop, around the world, and just make things happen man. 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. 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. Life is hard enough. Life is always going to be hard, so you need to push for what you want. 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. When I was young I used to watch MTV, Nirvana, or Guns N' Roses. When I go Miami, I go deep-sea fishing. I love doing that. The name Dirtee Stank came from a lyric I had when I was 17 or 16. Lyrical tank, like my name was Frank, going on dirty, going on stank. It sounded like a good name! 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. People used to shoot their guns while I was MCing. I always put people with my kind of background first. I think a black man, purple man, Martian man can run the country... as long as he does right by the people. I quite like thai boxing. But then I'm not surprised because I did taekwondo and karate and judo and all of that when I was a kid, and then just stopped when I got a bit older. I'm going to be big like Michael Jackson. 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. Seeing different sides of life, seeing different sides of society, that's what London's all about. When I was young my mum always tried to make me do that. Hip hop is the way it is because of America. 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'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.