Goldie

“I was a massive Human League fan, believe it or not.”

“I've lost friends and people that I've admired. The loss of any life is a travesty.”

“From the age of three, my life has been documented by social workers. There's a file somewhere in Walsall Social Services saying: 'He was a bit difficult today; he was trying to find out about his parents.' Or: 'He locked himself in his room and is collecting beer mats.'”

“When you go into the studio, you have to know what you're going in there for. I went into the studio because I had a voice and I wanted to change things, and I don't necessarily mean my bank account. The money is almost a B factor, a side product.”

“I'm eclectic in my tastes because of my trauma. It's madness. It's almost ADHD.”

“The weird thing is that 'Maestro' has somehow improved my DJing. When you've been in this music as long as I've been, you can sometimes become jaded. And when I got back from 'Maestro,' I realised the music is being kept in time for me - all I have to do is to wrap as much dynamic around it as I can. DJs don't realise how lucky we are.”

“Anyone who asks if graffiti is really art should be cast out into a field, because they're Neanderthals.”

“That's why I want to screw with the abyss of technology, play God with science, so I can hop, skip and slide back and forth through time.”

“Thailand is a really beautiful place, culturally and spiritually. You appreciate it the longer you stay.”

“The layers you get in graffiti, the ornateness, you can hear it in my music. I paint with my music. It's a form of synaesthesia.”

“I ran to the arts, because the arts are the one thing that would never abandon me.”

“Too many people are making images of war. If I want to see war, I'll watch the news.”

“I think most albums should be 13 tracks, to be fair. It's a matter of interest. It's quality over quantity.”

“Just no gentrified drum and bass music anymore, please! It's not good for your health.”

“I have never engineered a record. I will draw a record and I'll show you what it's gonna look like. And I will design it and sketch it out and show you, you know, the breaks are coming in here. Sixteen bars. Move out. 32 bars and you get this baseline. Repeat this. Ghost it. Take the tops out of that. Make it go thin. Get a filter. Reverse it.”

“From where I've come from, I look back at everything, all these people that influenced my life as a kid growing up in a really bad environment, it just makes it all worthwhile in terms of the recognition.”

“I've always felt mixed race. Or as my music teacher said during a lesson: 'You are a mulatto.' I always felt there were white people, black, and then people like me in the middle.”

“I DJ'd my first pirate station from a house I broke into in Haringey.”

“We have choices in life when we're young and I think a lot of things were stacked against me.”

“Just feeling misunderstood sometimes, I guess, has been my biggest downfall.”