East End Kid

Dizzee Rascal (AKA Dylan Mills) has finally moved on from UK grime with his poppiest album yet, The Fifth, recruiting Robbie Williams for its lead single, Goin' Crazy. He's even recorded in the US. But will the MC's fans buy it?

Mills, speaking from Los Angeles, grants he's “anxious” for his (yes!) fifth album to drop. “I've been sitting on it for so long – I just want it to come out. I've listened to it a million times and I'm almost sick of it myself!” The Brit last ventured out with 2009's blockbuster, Tongue N' Cheek. But he's remained visible with tours and cameos – Mills features on EDMster Calvin Harris' 18 Months. “I kinda never stopped making music, in a sense, but then I took a year out to just live,” Mills says. “I mean, I bought a place in Miami. I was out in America a lot, but all the while still making the album... I guess I wasn't keeping track of the time like that. I didn't realise it was four years. I didn't realise like [it was] ten years since I put out my first album [2003's Boy In Da Corner]... I was just getting on with it.”

Last year the council estate kid performed at the opening of the Olympic Games – a symbolic and personal triumph. “To be represented as part of British history to the world like that was amazing to me, man – especially in the area that I grew up, because I'm from around that way, like East London, in Stratford... My mum was there. Everyone was proud.”

Mills, then a DIY teen, debuted with grime record Boy..., which won the prestigious Mercury Prize – and impressed a junior Tinie Tempah. Mills outgrew the genre. For Tongue... he collaborated with Harris on electro hits like Dance Wiv Me.

The Fifth serves as a new chapter for Mills since he's lately signed to the major, Island Records – although he describes it as “a partnership” with his Dirtee Stank stable. (Liberator is Mills' Australian label, however.) Island approached him at the BRIT Awards, “offering a load of money”. “We had to just kinda tell 'em like, 'Nah, actually, that's not enough!'” Mills boasts. What ensued was a year of negotiations. “Then they came back with something that made sense.” Mills sought a label with global reach – and “a big machine”. As such, The Fifth is commercially ambitious. Nevertheless, Mills didn't contact Williams for Goin' Crazy because he's iconic (which he isn't Stateside). Rather, he'd met the maverick and liked him. “He's someone I actually sit down and get on with and have a chat with and just chill.” Other guests on the album include Tinie, Jessie J and will.i.am (singing, not producing). But the biggest surprise is that, at a time when American urban acts are looking to the UK, Mills cut The Fifth in the States. In the album's credits are RedOne (Lady GaGa) and Warren “Oak” Felder and Andrew “Pop” Wansel (Miguel), Mills conferring with his management and label on who to hire. “It's basically just the best of the best – they're putting me in there with the biggest people.” Mills modestly suggests that he was “lucky” the hitmakers agreed to work with him. Overall, creating The Fifth was “a different process” – but one the MC enjoyed.

Curiously, Mills has given little consideration to how old grime heads feel about his transformation – or balancing pop and street tracks. His main concern was the album's potential “live aspect” – he wanted “big sing-a-longs” and “hooks”. Grime is too “easy” for Mills now. “It's the pop stuff that's the gamble – and that's the one that takes work to perfect it.” Admittedly, in his grime days, Mills claimed the indie crowd were more accepting of him (Arctic Monkeys are champions).

Today Mills, long an American college fave, holds that it's still hard for a UK MC to break the US. “It's like trying to take Chinese food to China, innit?,” he quips. The market is competitive – many US rappers fail. “The good thing about me spending so much time here in the last year or so is that I realise how different the culture is.”

Mills may be keen to conquer the US charts, but he's unsure if he wants to be as huge as Kanye West. “That'd be crazy. But the other side of it is obviously it drives him a bit mad – it drives people a bit mad. I think it'd be more intense to be famous here. At least I know I can manoeuvre with fame in the UK, but in America it's a whole different ball game. So that would be interesting if I did get famous – to see how I'd handle it and how you'd manoeuvre around that, 'cause it's a crazy place. But I just want my music to be big everywhere... We'll just see what happens, man. I've got a lifetime to be big and famous in America as well. If it doesn't happen this time, it might happen next time. All that matters is that I'm ready for it when it does happen.”

Mills has unlikely fans, one being Prince Harry, whom he met at a festival. The MC joked about punching HRH in the face – and he loved it. “He's obviously a bit of a rascal himself, innit? That's what I got from meeting him – it's like, All right, then, okay... A few of them super-rich kids that I've come across are actually a bit naughty – and they're a bit more like me (laughs). It's only money that separates us, to an extent. But it's cool. That's the good thing about music – it just brings people together. It's not about class. It's just about what you're stimulated by. Music don't see colour, race, creed, class or none of that. So I'm just glad that I can do that.”