Having just dropped his new single Cross My Heart featuring Preeya Kalidas to radio, Skepta is gearing up for the release of his major label debut album Doin It Again. Rajveer Kathwadia speaks to the King Of Grime to find out what he has in store…

Hello Skep.

Yo cuz.

You good?

Yeah cool man.

It’s been a long time, haven’t spoken to you in a while.

Yeah cuz trust. It’s been a hot minute still.

And yeah in that time, things have proper escalated for yourself. It’s a whole new landscape for you now.

It’s a bit crazy still, I can’t lie.

How are you finding it all?

I dunno, I’m just trying to enjoy it all really. That’s the main thing cos I don’t really wanna start seeing it as work cos sometimes in the mainstream there’s a lot of politics behind the music scene and all I wanna do is make the tunes.

Have you had to compromise anything for mainstream success?

My manager is my bredrin and he’s fully supportive of anything I wanna do. For example when I first got Rescue Me, the drop on it was funny bruv, and obviously I’m the one who has to stand on stage and perform it. And unless I feel happy, I don’t wanna do it and he was like ‘cool bruv, do whatever you want.’ So I went back in and made the drop a lot more dark and the song went to 14 [in the charts] so yeah man I’m just enjoying it really. And now I’m getting some new support.

So you’re doing it on your terms?

Yeah cuz that’s the main thing cos when it’s all over I’ve done what I wanted instead of just worked and made money, even though I’ve got money, but I don’t don’t wanna look back and not like my back catalogue. I don’t want that.

It’s been manic trying to get hold of you between bookings, studio and so on, what have you been up to?

My main focus is my album Doin’ It Again init. I’m just wrapping it up now.

Tell us about that.

I’ve got Bad Boy on there which was my first single. I’ve got Rescue Me on there. I’ve just done a third single called Cross My Heart with Preeya Kalidas. She was getting into singing and I thought she was a cool girl so I hollered at her through Twitter and we got a vibe going and we made a smash bruv! It’s a bit sick still, I’m not gonna lie. Ahhhhhhh man! I swear down, when you hear it you’re gonna think that I’m taking the piss cuz! It may sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet, but nobody in the UK since Pow! has released a track like this before bruv. No one’s had the balls to release something like this. I’m going in and I don’t give a s**t. Back in the day when I made Bad Boy they didn’t wanna support it, but when I was on Chipmunk’s tour I was just going hard and I got to 23 by myself with no playlist, nothing. Just the video so I felt like I had the radio with their back against the wall. They were like ‘sorry we should have supported Bad Boy, we missed a good record and all that s**t so now I’m going hard bruv.

What was it like working with Preeya? Were there any apprehensions about working with someone who’s better known for acting than singing?

I heard that she used to do musicals in the West End so I thought to myself ‘Rah, if you’ve gotta stand up and sing in front of people on a regular basis you’ve gotta be good.’ There’s that thing in the back of your mind like ‘Oh she’s an actress trying to sing, I wonder if she’s gonna be another Katie Price?’ but when it came down to it she nailed the chorus. I told her what I wanted it to be about and how I felt in life at the moment and she just come back with a chorus that was banging bruv.

What’s the vibe of the track?

I actually produced the beat as well, so it’s gonna be a moment where people think ‘S**t! Skepta’s trying to go too hard!’ My next single’s not a play-play thing.

Is that in line with the rest of the album?

I’m not trying to follow anyone else’s path. My boundaries and criteria are that I need to be around 140bpm. In grime, I think that what people liked about me was that I would always say things that people think, but don’t say and just be funny about it and bus some jokes. And that’s really what I wanna maintain in the mainstream. Just stay Skepta. When I first made Bad Boy I gave the acapella out on Twitter so that people could understand. I’m not being rude, but a lot of these other artists that are doing mainstream work, you can’t really put their lyrics on a grime song. It’s completely different, a completely different life that they’re living. I’m trying to maintain it cos at the same time, I don’t think people like Tinchy Stryder, or Tinie Tempah or Chipmunk owe anything to grime cos I don’t think grime really held them up on a pedestal. Actually Chipmunk more than anyone cos people always looked at him like ‘rah he’s the new Dizzee Rascal,’ but at the same time I can’t really watch no one else, but watching myself if I made Oopsy Daisy then people would just write me off, they’d be like ‘F**k this, is this the same guy that said ‘God forgive me if I bus my nine?’’ So I’m just trying to stay on my own path. That’s basically what Doin It Again is about. You’re just gonna hear beats that I’m spitting on and just trying to spread the sound cos what Bad Boy showed me was how could I just be spitting on a song the same as always, but just cos the beat’s different everybody can like it? So I’m just experimenting and picked some good beats; there’s some grime on there, some mellowish kind of grime on there and I produced most of it myself. I’ve got BassBoy from Birmingham and he did a track called Amnesia, S-X has got a track on there called Big and obviously Agent X who produced Bad Boy and Rescue Me.

What do you think the reaction to it is gonna be like?

What I do know is that it’s gonna be good and people are gonna like it – even people from grime who are not sure about what I’m doing nowadays. I like that cos I never wanted to be just that guy and that’s why I like Timbaland cos no one can pigeonhole him and he can do what the f**k he wants. He can do a grime tune tomorrow and no one in America would ask him ‘What are you doing man? You’re selling out on hip hop.’ He don’t give a s**t cos he’ll make a tune with Drake singing, then he’ll make a pop tune with Justin Timberlake and then he’ll go and make a tune with Jay-Z. So Doin It Again is gonna be Skepta. It’s gonna be banging.

When you talk about staying true to being Skepta, is that why you’ve gone back to your classic line from Duppy for the title of the album?

Yeah man. I called my album Doin It Again cos I want people to understand. I was a DJ before init and my first big tune was Duppy and a lot of people would know it as Doin It Again. That’s why; and one, because I wanted people to remember that ‘rah Skepta started from Doin It Again’ like I said on the N-Dubz tune, this is actually ‘he’s still doin’ it’ and two, cos I’m just making another album full of bangers again.

Check back tomorrow for part 2 where we talk to Skepta about working with Diddy and what the future has in store for Boy Better Know…

Tags: Boy Better Know, Grime, Preeya Kalidas, Skepta