Along with The Streets, Dizzee Rascal (aka Dylan Mills) has been responsible for bringing urban music back to its origins.

US rhip-hop stars may rap about how awful fame is while quaffing magnums of Crystal in clubs before retiring to their hotel rooms with a honey on each knee - something we may aspire to but are likely to feel little connection with.

Dizzee and The Streets brought the stuff of everyday life - teenage pregnancies, late-night kebabs and petty crime - into their music, reminding everyone that Britain's street life is as urgent and interesting as America's and that lyrics don't have to be laden with drive-by shootings and gangsta posturing to get across the stark facts of city poverty. They became the leading representatives of grime, a new garage sub-genre.

Dizzee's 2003 album, Boy In Da Corner, was a wasp-sting to an industry used to cherry-picking sweet R'n'B honey from the army of urban music-makers. Propelled by anger and delivered at breakneck speed, it charted life in the estates of Hackney, London's growing gun culture and the harsh details of adolescent angst.

With Dizzee yapping out witty, furious lyrics ("I socialise in Hackney and Bow / I wear my trousers ridiculously low") over complex, mashed-up electronic beats, it was real in the best sense of the word.

It also won Dizzee the Mercury Prize aged 18, after a school career spent getting thrown out of lessons for disruptive behavior - except in music, where an understanding teacher put him on the road to expressing himself and his frustrations. It also got him stabbed in Ayia Napa, reportedly by jealous fellow artists, demonstrating that the internecine violence referred to in his music is also very real.

Second album Showtime is a little calmer and older but no less uncompromising. Dizzee says: "A year ago, I was straight off road, straight from outside the off-licence. Boy In Da Corner is that perspective - back against the wall, only seeing what's in front of you. It was harsh, bashing around music.

"I've moved forward, travelled, digested a lot. That's why this album is called Showtime. You think I'm just hardcore, raw? I'm more.

"I'm in transition," he says. "I've lived a full life and I want to talk about it. That stretches way before Boy In Da Corner, that's why I ain't talking about planes or champagne or things.

"I'm curious of where I come from. I ain't completely detached."