Where I grew up, there was only one CD shop, and I didn't really like school, so we'd register, then bunk off, and we would be round my mate's house making drum-and-bass mix tapes.
— Rag'n'Bone Man
We were a musical family, and we had record players. It would be a family thing to listen to music together.
At the start, it would kind of been more about freestyling. But then I started to sing over the beats. And then came a realisation that maybe I was alright at rapping, and people seemed to enjoy it, but when I sung, it was a real difference. Just the reaction of people, I was like, 'I think I should do that, cause it feels better.'
Rag 'N' Bone Man is for everybody, like Wu Tang is for the children.
People think it's not necessary to talk to another human being, and that's the part of it that I don't like. Some people will go up and want to talk to you about the music, which is cool; they're enthusiastic about the songs and know stuff about it, or, 'I really like your music. Nice to meet you.'
I don't really like being recognised, to be honest. People say nice things and stuff, but I'm not really in it for that side of things. I just want to play music.
At first, I didn't focus that much on the Internet. I was more, 'I'm going to write songs,' and I'd have sung that song out in a club, pub, or a jam session or whatever 10 times before I recorded it. We live in an Internet age, and if you don't embrace it, you get left behind a bit.
I like the dirty venues better - Brixton Jams is like home.
I grew up in a little town called Uckfield, and there's not much to do - so we used to fight a lot. I was never in serious trouble, but we used to have the local bobby round the house saying, 'Rory's been up to this again.'
I used to go round to my granddad's house on a Saturday morning, and we'd sit and eat our porridge and watch re-runs of 'Steptoe and Son' on BBC Two. I thought it was hilarious - and Rag 'N' Bone Man sounded like a blues name to me. It reminded me of people like Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Mama Thornton.
The insomnia just perpetuates. I have one bad night, then I get it in my head that I can't sleep. I've been trying these meditation tapes - there are a couple on Spotify - and they're meant to calm you. But they don't seem to work.
Hip-hop was the music that actually got me excited about it and the actual prospect of performing. I think I loved music from an early age because my parents wanted me to love it as much as they did. It was constantly there.
The inspiration for 'Human' came from a conversation. We stumbled upon this question: sometimes you think a problem is a problem when sometimes it isn't. And it takes you to have a little step back and realize you might be a bit dramatic.
I had some really early recordings when I was 16 or 17. I was rapping over jungle beats with my friends. We used to do pirate radio stations in my area, down near Brighton. They were pretty terrible.
People are obsessed by pictures these days. They just want to say they met someone, have the evidence.
I don't really like to stand in one spot. People say that you have your lane or a certain type of music. I don't believe that. You choose your own lane, whichever one you want, then the people decide whether it's good or not.
I do have a problem with someone that just wants a picture. People who ask for a selfie and don't even say hello to you, it's a weird thing that's happened in the last few years.
Nobody told me how to sing, so I just thought I'd try and sing like Howlin' Wolf. It was like a bark; there was melody to it - but I would go off a bit and I wouldn't stick AutoTune on it or anything to make it in key. Even now, I couldn't tell you about harmonies. I couldn't tell about what notes I'm singing because nobody taught me to sing.
When I was 15, I wanted to be a jungle MC. Everybody I knew wanted to be Stevie Hyper D or Skibadee or whatever.
People have got no attention span these days with music - I come from the time where I bought the whole album and listened to it back to back.
My mum always wanted to send me to a music school, but we didn't really have the money. So even now, I'm not a technically good singer. If you asked me to sing a particular harmony, I wouldn't know how.
I've got 99 problems, and most of them are height-related.
Close to my heart is Muddy Waters. I love the way he sang. It was almost like a bark. It was like the bark of a dog: it's not fancy. Sometimes it's not like singing; it's like shouting.
I used to sing as a kid, but it was quite squeaky. I think I was about 19 or 20, and we used to go to these jam sessions and open mics. I just got the courage to sing one day. I don't think anyone expected it to sound like that.
I did Jools Holland, which was bonkers because it's an institution, and as a family, we've all been into it our whole lives, and then I did Hootenanny. I took my mum and dad along, and they were sat there next to Gregory Porter and Chaka Khan. My dad was just laughing, like he couldn't believe it was real.
There are really three parts to the album, and there's, like, quite a lot of hip-hop on there. I guess it is a worry that people who love 'Human' might think they're buying the album and that's a blueprint for it, but it's definitely not. Hopefully they'll be pleasantly surprised.
I don't mind being recognised, as long as people are nice. I do like meeting people; it's just that some people are a bit disrespectful... Sometimes it's like, I'm having a roast dinner, and someone's taking a picture of me. I don't mind taking pictures, but just ask. Otherwise, it's a bit weird.
I wanted to write songs from the ground up, I wanted to sit at a piano and build around that. But I still have a lot of love for hip-hop, so I want to do more collaborations in that sense.
If someone asked if I I'd want no one to recognise me anymore, I'd take that option, I think.
I think there's an attitude these days that you can go straight from a studio to the stage, and it isn't really like that. But playing live was the most important thing for me at the start because whenever I recorded something, it didn't sound right; I didn't like how my voice sounded. It was just raw.
I've been writing a lot more folky, country type stuff. One of the reasons I wanted to write in the first place was because of Darrell Scott.
I'm new to a lot of people, and I don't think anyone wants to listen to 16 tracks of a new artist.
Me and my dad used to go to these jam sessions and open mic nights, but I was always scared of singing on stage. It felt different to rapping - more pressured.
It's a weird thing, beards now. I'll be in east London, and lads come up to me: 'Yo man, what beard oil do you use?' I'm like, 'I don't know what you're talking about.' It's just laziness.
When you get to your teenage years, you want to find something that you identify with. It's almost a slight rebellion; you don't want to listen to what your parents listen to anymore; you want to find your own music. That, for me, was hearing the Fugees for the first time.
