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I've heard some other people say that about Mos Def, but I think really it's a misconception. Black On Both Sides is a fairly mainstream album: it's not about guns, drugs, or thug life, even ghetto life, really. As such, I think Mos had to come out and say, without ambiguity, 'this is still a black album' in order to avert any criticism about selling out. I don't mean that to sound bad, or calculating, but he is absolutely an artist who wants to have his cake and eat it. I have no issue with that, really, the ability to reach a large audience without selling out is what every artist hopes to achieve, that's exactly what he managed to do, and I don't deny that he believes in his philosophy: even those parts that to me, as an outside observer, seem contradictory.

Is hip hop about about the struggle of disadvantaged people or of black people? I've no idea, really. The black ghetto was responsible for hip-hop, something still unique (i.e. not appropriated by Elvis, The Rolling Stones or any of those other people he lists in that song), and was really born out of black impoverishment. As such it is/was their culture, and I can see why you wouldn't want to let that go, get diluted by people who 'don't understand'.

There is a parallel here with football (you can skip this if you like). Football in the UK was always associated with the urban poor and working class. You've spent the week shovelling coal, building railroads or whatever, talking about football, talking about people from your neighbourhood who'd been signed by a big club and got out of the mire. Nowadays it's been co-opted by wankers who couldn't care less about its roots, culture, traditions, etc. And I despise those people! I've never been down a coal mine in my life, but it was mine! They didn't want it for years, and now they've come and taken it away and ruined it. Football isn't just a game for me, and I don't think hip-hop is just music for Mos Def.

If you compare the political content of Black On Both Sides to the chapter on racism in Michael Moore's Stupid White Men there is a huge amount of common ground. Reading it, I could almost imagine Moore listening to Mos Def while he was working on that part. I can understand that when Mos Def says it, it's different: essentially, we want what we fucking deserve; whereas Moore basically says, look, give these people what they fucking deserve.

But at the end of the day, I can't pretend to be anything more than a consumer: my life is no closer to that of Mos Def growing up in a black neighbourhood in Brooklyn than it is to Frank Zappa's, growing up in the middle of a desert in California. I suppose sometimes that distance, possibly, gives me a nice ignorance that allows me to enjoy both things equally with only occasional feelings of being an interloper. I've been to hip-hop clubs in Germany where the whitest kids you've ever seen are calling each other nigger: most of them have never seen a black person in their lives, it's like fiction for them. I don't think I'm quite that naive. Where was I? Oh, this comment is too long anyway...

UK hip-hop scene? I can't imagine I'm the best source. Obviously, Roots Manuva who is excellent: a unique flow. He's probably matching Mos Def for guest appearences by now, I'd have thought. The winner, I think, of last year's Mercury Music Prize was a kid called Dizzee Rascal, who's album is pretty fierce and a grower, a definite UK sound falling somewhere between UK garage/two-step, US hip-hop, and something more punk, I think NME have started calling it 'grime' or some other stupid bloody thing. His crew member, Wiley--who has actually been around for a while--has recently released an album, which has been getting good press but I haven't heard yet. A different type of thing is The Streets' new album, A Grand Don't Come for Free which is much less bangin than the first LP, but better too, really: a very UK sound, and not so much rapping as spoken word.