My dad was one of the reasons I kept Simply Red going so long. I was brought up to stick at things. I was the only songwriter in Simply Red, so I could have toured under my own banner. But I'd developed the name, so I stuck with it.

I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly.

Everyone that was over 13 was my parent. Diana [Ross] was my momma. The Marvelettes were all my parents, The Contours... 'You can't have a candy bar now, you gotta study now, do this now.

Something like Bohemian Rhapsody didn't just come out of thin air. I did a bit of research, although it was tongue-in-cheek and it was mock-opera. Why not? I certainly wasn't saying I was an opera fanatic and I knew everything about it.

As far as songwriting, my inspirations came from love, life and death, and viewing other people's situations.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.