From cosying up to Rihanna in the iTunes charts to getting signed by Atlantic Records, 2010 was a big one for SB.TV favourite, Ed Sheeran. Lily Mercer and Tina Hart caught up with him to discuss grime and guitars…

On your current EP, No.5 Collaborations Project, you’ve got a lot of big name features. How did they come about?
It was through SB to begin with. I did the video for You Need Me for SB.TV and they all started getting in touch with him. It was an idea that I had ages ago and it unfolded then to be able to happen. Then it snowballed and all the connections fitted in.

Did you have the tracks already or was it something you worked on together?
The tracks were a collaboration or joint effort; most of them are specifically tailored for the acts. Like, JME’s very set in his opinions so I made him a track about not being played on the radio. The track was just the beat and “Are you gonna play me though/This song was never meant for the radio.” We wrote the rest of the chorus together and he wrote the verses. With the Devlin one, we literally sat in the studio going bar for bar and he freestyled pretty much all of his verses; it was mental.

What do you think of the fact that Radio is now being played on the radio?
Yeah, it’s playlisted on 1Xtra and it charted as well. So that whole song about not being able to chart and not getting playlisted, it kind of flipped it on its head.

click to play video

Was there anyone that you would have liked to feature on there, but couldn’t?
The whole project had to be done in such a short space of time. It took about a year because I was working on other stuff like my main album and the singer songwriter stuff. I had to do it when I was free. Every time I’d finish in the studio with my songwriting stuff, I’d go in the studio with Devlin or Griminal till about 6 in the morning. The grime scene is huge and there are so many talented people. I put it into thought for those tracks, but because I only did that amount of tracks, that was all that there was. If I’d had time then there would have been more people to go on, but I guess that’s what Collaborations No. 6 is for.

What was it like working with Wiley?
I’m gonna let a little secret off… he’s the only one I haven’t met. I’ve spoke to him on the phone a lot and I’ve done some vocals on tunes for him, but I’ve never met him. That was the first tune we completed, so it was quite a good benchmark. But the mad thing is that everyone on the EP, I hang out with on a friendship level now so I really wanna meet Wiley just to tell him how great he is.

What do you think it is about your sound is it that attracts grime heads?
I don’t know, it’s not really grime music; it’s more like singer songwriter with some hip hop beats. Every MC came from a real approach; they took a bit of their heart out and put it on the track. That was them, not me. I just supplied the backing track and the chorus and the original concept. With the P Money song, all I did was make the chorus and do the beat and stuff and he was like ‘the concept is about this car crash’. People gave me too much credit. People say I brought the best out of the MCs, but I think the MCs brought the best out of me. It was a collaborations project, it happened the way it should’ve done.