YOU'D have to go some way to find a more unlikely pop comeback than that of Craig David.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the R & B artist became a megastar seemingly overnight, his hits Fill Me In and Seven Days permeating the collective mainstream consciousness.

His debut album, Born to Do It, sold a staggering seven million copies. By contrast, he only shifted 33,000 of his record of Motown covers in 2010. Even taking into account the diminished state of the physical album market, the figure was a damning reflection of the singer’s fall from commercial grace.

An unfavourable TV impersonation by comedian Leigh Francis didn’t help.

A headline slot at Boundary Brighton is one indicator of David’s renewed popularity, though, and he is certainly full of vim and vigour today.

“Now, when I wake up in the morning, I think: I have the ability to touch millions of people with my music, and if that isn’t something to be thankful for, I don’t know what is.”

After a lengthy spell living in Miami, David is back in the UK and back in the charts – last year’s garage/grime hit with rapper Big Narstie, When the Bassline Drops, reached number 10 in the charts. As is the custom for any record that sells over 400,000 copies, the song received gold certification.

“I’m looking at the gold record for it in the room now,” says David. A new album, Following My Intuition, is out on September 30.

Simultaneously open, engaging, and prone to talking in quasi-motivational rhetoric, David seems intent on capitalising upon his music career’s second wind.

“It’s been an incredible journey. I’ve realised there are only three things that really matter to me: being in the studio making new music, going out and performing it, and then the simple things like having family and friends around me.”

While modes of recording and releasing music have changed dramatically since David was first on the scene, he claims there are parallels between the way in which he broke through initially and his recent rebirth.

Before he released his first album, David would DJ in small London clubs. In Miami, he would put on DJ nights at his apartment and record his sets, uploading them later to Soundcloud. “Friends wanted me to make mix CDs for them, but I was like, ‘I don’t even have a CD player.’ I uploaded them online, and that led to radio stations asking to play them out on the air.”

Eventually, David ended up on Mistajam’s popular Radio One Extra show, where he met Big Narstie. Of course, he has effectively trodden this same path once before, back in the late 90s – although as yet he hasn’t quite hit the heights of his first stadium tour.

“I started out the first time in garage venues like the Coliseum in London. The next minute I was playing Wembley Arena. It went so fast. This time around I played my first gig back in London to 350 people, and then before you know it I’m selling out Brixton Academy and doing shows like Boundary Brighton.”

Far from the palm-tree lined streets of Miami (where David still regularly hosts his TS5 pool party, but of where he also says he should have spent only a “two-week holiday [...] but sometimes it takes living there for five years to realise that”), the singer remembers making his early music as a teenager in his mum’s house in Southampton.

“When I made the first album I was in my bedroom, looking out at a car park. I was thinking, a little garden would be amazing. Those small little things of motivation gave me the inspiration to just get on it.

“I would tell my mates, ‘Actually you know what, I’m not coming out with you and getting smashed, I’m staying in and finishing this song.’ “They’d say, ‘Craig, come on man, you’re going on like you’ve got a record deal,’ but I’d say, ‘Nah, I just need to finish this song.’ The nine times out of 10 I didn’t go out with them ending up being songs like Fill Me In and Seven Days.”

Having tapped back into that youthful devotion to his craft, David is clearly revelling in his improbable second life in pop.

Boundary Brighton Stanmer Park, Lewes Road, Brighton, Saturday, September 17, 12pm to 10.30pm, from £37, visit boundarybrighton.com