Tinie Tempah

Oh, I'm going to ruin the illusion for them now.

But there's loads of special effects where I'm jumping out of helicopters,

Oh, do they like watching all that?

Yeah, so they're watching it and they're like, Daddy, is this real?

Did you really do that?

I'm a superhero.

I'm like, yes.

Does it feel like a different industry that you're coming back into?

It feels like a different industry, yes, entirely, pretty much.

I'm fortunate because, again, during my hiatus, I also set up a publishing company, so we, like, a lot of people... It's the busiest hiatus anyone's ever had.

I know, but I'm just like, I can't be idle.

The devil makes work of an idle hand, so...

can't be idle like i have to do stuff but in that interim period we ended up um producing tracks for drake like one of our producers made passion fruit for drake which is drake's like third biggest song ever so from out the gate like we were already doing really well chris brown sean paul we've got a drake and michael jackson car like we've we did we've done quite a lot of stuff so

um in with with both of my hats on like almost like an exec and and then a front man artist the industry is not a hundred percent different but if you're an artist that's trying to break through now it's a completely different time it's entirely saturated um uh before we had um a different type of gatekeeper like a more traditional gatekeeper which i don't necessarily agree with

But I think what was interesting about the time is to cut through, you felt like the old guard had to acknowledge the fact that you were talented.

And therefore, because you were talented, and this is just my opinion, no disrespect to anyone, but because they believed you were talented, then you would now get these opportunities where by now I think it's a mix of a bit of a popularity contest.

who's the most popular, who's getting the most engagement, regardless of the quality of the actual product.

Yeah, I think so.

I think your product doesn't necessarily have to be great, but if you're a great marketeer and you have a great engaged fan base, you could be maybe not operating at the same scale of the Beatles, but in theory, you could be selling out some of the same venues.

I can tell you why not.