"Because I spent time in L.A., too, growing up on gangster rap. My cousin was a gangster bitch, and she knew the Bloods and the Crips and she was Sri Lankan, so we’d go to all these clubs down on Crenshaw. Then I would come back to college at Saint Martins, and I was learning a whole other way. Like having that whole ‘90s hip-hop from L.A. and then going to Saint Martins, where it’s all the Britpop stuff about being shy and hating yourself. I was a Sri Lankan refugee, like, the scum of society, and then I went right to Los Angeles, into African-American culture, and it was just incredible. I’ve never seen black people like that in England. In England black people still live within the parameters of white society. It was an eye-opener. Then I’d be in school and the students would be like, 'I’m white, and I’m male, and I don’t know what to do, I hate myself.' I was just like, there is this contemporary culture in America that’s writhing with so much good shit and bad shit that no one is really making art out of yet, you know?"
"Because I spent time in L.A., too, growing up on gangster rap. My cousin was a gangster bitch, and she knew the Bloods and the Crips and she was Sri Lankan, so we’d go to all these clubs down on Crenshaw. Then I would come back to college at Saint Martins, and I was learning a whole other way. Like having that whole ‘90s hip-hop from L.A. and then going to Saint Martins, where it’s all the Britpop stuff about being shy and hating yourself. I was a Sri Lankan refugee, like, the scum of society, and then I went right to Los Angeles, into African-American culture, and it was just incredible. I’ve never seen black people like that in England. In England black people still live within the parameters of white society. It was an eye-opener. Then I’d be in school and the students would be like, 'I’m white, and I’m male, and I don’t know what to do, I hate myself.' I was just like, there is this contemporary culture in America that’s writhing with so much good shit and bad shit that no one is really making art out of yet, you know?"
