Yesterday Skepta told us about his new single and album, and today the Boy Better Know MC lets Rajveer Kathwadia know about what it was like to work with P. Diddy and what the future has in store for the BBK team…

You were telling us about your new album Doin It Again, is P. Diddy gonna be on there, cos I know he’s your mate now?

Yeah I’ve got that Hello Good Morning track on my album, but what I’m probably gonna do is put it on the platinum edition. My album when it first comes out, I basically want it to be the album that I perform on tour. I’m not gonna perform Hello Good Morning on my tour cos he’s not gonna be with me. He’s gonna put it out on his album first and then I’m gonna put it out on my album. The song’s out now on iTunes so if you want, you can get it now.

What was it like hooking up with Puff?

Boy it was a bit mad bruv, it was crazy… It’s sick init? Imagine that. Like I said, I used to DJ cuz, then I started spitting, trying it out, clash people, went Sidewinders, done dubs, done an album, then another one, then I’m f**king making a tune with someone who back in the day I never would have imagined it. I just appreciate all the people that actually said ‘Skepta’ cos I think ‘Rah, imagine if they had said a different name?’ Then someone else would have made the tune innit? And when they said ‘Skepta’ and I knew ‘Rah it is me,’ and he phoned my phone and said ‘Skepta, I want you to make a tune,’ I said ‘What kind of tune? I’m a producer, I can make a grime tune that people listen to in their car, or I can make a club tune that’s banging and bouncy, or I can try and meet in the middle.’ And he was saying, ‘Look, don’t make me no commercial s**t. I could have got my label to holler at some UK artists and get a remix done, but I wanted to do it directly with the people and they’re saying you, so I want you to give me some banging s**t, so I went away and I felt like I had the whole country on my back and I had to represent. So I was thinking to myself ‘S**t man, what am I gonna do?!?’ And then I thought ‘yeah’ and I went to the computer, made the beat, got it mixed down in some big studio and when I listened to it, I thought ‘that’s the beat, that beat is banging!’ Went and wrote the verse and I just wanted to represent bruv. Obviously there’s other MCs in the UK that are talented and they probably would’ve done something completely different to me and said some deep lyrics with some next fast flow, but I don’t think the country’s really ready for that, so I just thought I’ll make a banger like Doin It Again or Too Many Man and it kind of worked. 95% of the feedback was love like ‘Skepta you’re a f**king dan!’ like ‘that is sick!’ but you get the 5% that says ‘it would have been better if Wiley had done it, or Ghetts had done it,’ but you expect that init cos the grime scene has got its own divisions and some people would rather someone else.

But the people chose you though.

I’m happy that I got the chance and I hope the UK feel that I represented and the tune is banging’.

When Diddy calls does he call from a private number? Or is it the Bad Boy office number?

Nah, I think he called me from a normal BlackBerry still. It was a normal mobile number.

So did you write his bars for him as well?

[Laughs] …. Nah, nah nah. He wrote them….

Ok cool, so how aware is he of what’s going on over here?

He knows Pow! He always talks to me about Pow! and he always makes reference back to that song all of the time. Like he’d say things to me like [does impression of P. Diddy] ‘is that s**t blowing up like Pow!?’ [Laughs] I’m saying the tune’s banging, but obviously we haven’t made a video for it. If we made a video for it, the tune would have been f**king major, people would have gone sick. Sometimes I think visuals just bring tunes to life. Like when I did Rescue Me everyone wasn’t sure what I was trying to even say until I done the video. But if we’d done a video I think it would be even more major, but it’s done its part man. There’s support from the people and it’s above tunes that are on the A list on the chart.

Did you spit your ‘I wanna make Ps like Diddy,’ lyric to him?

Nah….[laughs] It’s mad how I always said ‘I wanna make Ps like Diddy’ and now I’m making a tune with him. It’s f**ked init? That’s mad.

Will we ever see a Boy Better Know album?

That’s all Skepta’s about. You hear me say it in my lyrics and everything bruv. I make a point of it like before I start I always say ‘Boy Better Know’ all day. My fans are familiar with my crew. Even my new supporters from the last two singles are familiar with JME at least and they know the name of the crew and that’s a start. Tinchy was the first to go through, Chipmunk was the second one, but I just look at them and try to cover myself so I don’t end up in the same predicament as them where I think they try and say their crew name a bit late, Tinchy said ‘Ruff Sqwad’ a bit late in his career. He put Tryna Be Me on Catch 22 to bring them through, but I’ve always tried to incorporate it from early. I’m sure before I come some people would have heard of Too Many Man before anyway. I wasn’t a new name. Some people still see me in the street and say ‘Skepta – too many man, too many man!’ and they still link to me and they know it’s all Boy Better Know so yeah man I’m just trying to build that up. In my new song I say ‘Boy Better Know’ on that and just trying to incorporate that, so when they see my video and they look about they’ll say ‘Oh that’s JME and that’s Frisco’. We’ve got a tune with another massive dance act which we’ll reveal soon. The Boy Better Know album’s sick bruv. It’s still called VIP, we’re not changing the name. We’ve got about four or five songs done already and we’re going into the studio. There’s obviously Too Many Man, Going In and we’ve got the next tune which is going on JME’s album Blam! as well, oh and that tune with Jammer if Big Dada will license it. It’ll be probably next year and hopefully we’ll just take it back to the So Solid days and just kill it.

Any last words?

I need everyone’s support on the next single cos it’s so hard I know the radio might blackball me so just support that and understand what I’ve been trying to do lyrically so that’s it really. I’m Boy Better Know man for life.

Doin It Again is out this autumn.

MySpace.com/Skepta

Tags: Boy Better Know, Grime, Hip Hop, P Diddy, Skepta