"I feel like I was more accepted by the white community than the black [one]. A lot of the time, the black kids would be like, ‘Oh, ’cause you lighter, you’re not as “gang” as us. That’s really the attitude they have. It made me misbehave more because I felt like I had to prove a point."

"I never felt like I was in the grime scene…I was the outsider. So when I veered away from it, I didn’t feel like I was leaving the circle – I felt like I was never in it…No one paid me any attention…I had to do everything on my own."

"If a woman [has] shared her body with me, why can I not speak of my experience?...It’s not me casting a judgment on someone, it’s something that has happened. You can rap about whatever the hell you wanna rap about – that’s why we’re rappers. You can have an opinion against it but you can’t tell me not to do it. At the end of the day, that’s the way it is."

"It’s like when footballers run underwater in water tanks…There’s a high pressure against your body. If you can run fast in a water tank, when they take you out of the water, you can run way faster because there’s less pressure. I used to go on to radio sets and be spraying so fast, people would be like, ‘How are you doing that?’"

"I’ve a kinship with women…That’s why I’ve always put women in strong positions in music."

"I never thought of my music as dark…It can’t be that dark to get people through a dark period, can it?"

"“This ain’t bad-guy talk, cos I’m not a bad guy…But people don’t realise what fear can do. I’ve had situations where I’ve been so scared, where I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, and it’s gone on for weeks and it’s ruining my life. It makes you sick, it makes you mentally ill."

"One of the biggest problems with my daughter is that I’ve never loved anybody that much before…I was there at her birth. And all of a sudden I started feeling things. And it was too much for me. Because I was emotionally numb, and it was easier for me to get through life being emotionally numb, but then suddenly I was feeling things…I’ve lost people before, like grandmothers, but I’ve bounced back…This is different. Everything looks different, even music doesn’t sound the same. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I was in Islington yesterday and I was hoping I was going to see her, hoping she’s gonna walk up to me."

"Stringer is very calculating and he has to be for so many reasons. He'll calculates the next steps, shipments, inventory, pays workers..all that. But the wicked part is that he can plan murders because that's a part of his business. I'll tell you, if I, Idris, had to contract for murders as part of my job, I couldn't do it because I have a heart. I have no stomach for ordering other people's deaths. Stringer just gets in there, orders the deed and bam..that's it..it's done and he doesn't think twice about it. There's no way I could be that cold. I'm also a more lively kid out there, doing stuff and I can't just do one thing forever. Stringer is committed to his job and business so much so he doesn't have much of a personal life so he's more one dimensional. As for me I have a child, a life, thirst for travel, you know I'm curious..whereas Stringer is more interested in being the best business person and his interests don't go further than that."

"Work hard, sleep less"

"I'm an ambitious person. I never consider myself in competition with anyone, and I'm not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, it's just that my journey started so, so long ago, and I'm still on it and I won't stand still."