The British rapper talks to us about his whirlwind year which saw him play countless festivals and shows. He also touches on his much-anticipated second album, to be released next year. <b>You have been touring heavily in Europe, America and Australia and now you are here. You also won several industry awards this year. Have you had a chance recently to kick back and smell the roses?</b> For me kicking back and smelling the roses takes two weeks. After a week and a half, I'm like "what am I doing? I need to do something. I need to get up and go to the studio".<span> </span>Basically what I have done is go right back to the very first studio where I recorded my first album. It's not the nicest studio - obviously, as you can imagine since things got bigger, we have been to more professional studios<span> </span>and after a while that did get a bit overwhelming - but we went back to that first studio, recorded an EP called <i>Happy Birthday </i>with my sound engineer. It's a quick little thing, eight tracks, and everything came back to me at that point. That's when I really started smelling the roses and it gave me a lot excitement and anticipation for next year. <b>That must have been surreal. To go back to the studio where it all began...</b> That's what made it fun. The bigger you get, the more detached you can be from the real world if you allow yourself to do that. We could eat at swanky places and go to swanky studios and drive swanky cars all the time but then when you try to talk to your demographic they will not be able to relate to you. <b>Have you felt detached in that, after all that touring, you woke up realising you didn't know where you were?</b> There was actually quite a monumental time when that happened. I was in a studio with Pharrell (Williams) and we just went to Miami the day before. I literally arrived in the hotel and I had to see Pharrell a few hours later. I was jet-lagged, I had a cold sore in my mouth and I got into the studio and I was like, that's Pharrell! I am tired, I can't concentrate, I got a cold sore and Pharrell is right in front of me waiting to make music. I was like, I can't do this! I told him, "Yo! Let's talk, let's not make music and just chill for a bit!" And we did that because he totally knew where I was coming from and we maintained that relationship and we did music in other ways. <b>You also toured alongside stars such as Usher and Rihanna, who are also known for their hard work ethic. Do you learn anything from seeing how these artists work?</b> For me, even just watching them is a lesson itself to see how professional they are. You would be quite surprised how they really are. They are quite anal about everything. They want to know what's going on from the techs who are putting the stuff together to the fans. They are very much in touch of everything that is going on. <b>You played all sorts of music festivals from hip-hop, dance, pop and rock. Tonight you are performing before the trance heavyweight Tiesto. Does each festival performance require a different mindset when performing?</b> I think festivals in general you need a different mindset. The overall mindset for me at a festival is that it is not my own show, so not everybody is there to see me, so that gives me the opportunity to steal Tiesto's fans or whoever is in the line-up. That is always fun and exciting. At a festival, anything goes. <b>What is the status on your second album <i>Sophmore</i>? Rumour has it that it may feature a lot of guests artists.</b> To be honest with you, I'm half way into the second record. There are some tracks that have collaborations and some don't. The way I record my albums is that I record a whole bunch of tracks and then we shortlist and then we're like, "This is the album but we are missing a track, we need a beat or something like that." So it may be collaborative-heavy or not, or it just depends how the straw is drawn. It will be out next year in May. <b>Then you do it all over again with a bigger tour?</b> So much bigger. Oh my god! I am saving it all up for 2012.
