Rag'n'Bone Man

Where I grew up, there was only one CD shop, and I didn't really like school, so we'd register, then bunk off, and we would be round my mate's house making drum-and-bass mix tapes.

I did Jools Holland, which was bonkers because it's an institution, and as a family, we've all been into it our whole lives, and then I did Hootenanny. I took my mum and dad along, and they were sat there next to Gregory Porter and Chaka Khan. My dad was just laughing, like he couldn't believe it was real.

We were a musical family, and we had record players. It would be a family thing to listen to music together.

I had some really early recordings when I was 16 or 17. I was rapping over jungle beats with my friends. We used to do pirate radio stations in my area, down near Brighton. They were pretty terrible.

At the start, it would kind of been more about freestyling. But then I started to sing over the beats. And then came a realisation that maybe I was alright at rapping, and people seemed to enjoy it, but when I sung, it was a real difference. Just the reaction of people, I was like, 'I think I should do that, cause it feels better.'

People are obsessed by pictures these days. They just want to say they met someone, have the evidence.