TV and Radio: Work in progress (original) (raw)

We took our name from Sam Greenlee's book, The Spook Who Sat By The Door, about a guy who badly wanted to be in the CIA so he trained himself with the whole spy routine and took it to the streets.

We identify with that so strongly - we got together in 1994 and we've been in training ever since. We turned down loads of deals until we got a good starting point with the one we've got now. And even then we took nine months to get it the way we want.

I'd like to say to any musicians out there that if you sign your deal on the first day, then I can guarantee something is seriously wrong. We've been working on our music all the time. When you record a song, then that's just one version of it. Live, we can perform with or without a band or DJs - we're ready for any situation and change stuff round all the time.

Our shows are like a carnival. We invite allies (we don't call them fans) on stage and they can stay or whatever. I don't like rappers who get up on stage looking all upset.

We wrote the single Things I've Seen for Laurence Fishburne's movie Once In A Life, his first as a director. He'd heard us and he wanted to use some of our older stuff, but we saw the movie, wrote this specially, and he went for it. He's our favourite actor - no, really, he always has been. He turned up for our video, something he'd never done before. He's most definitely a Spook.

Variety is really our thing. Now, with people like Mos Def and Busta Rhymes, hip-hop is getting its potential back. I hope that soon people will get bored of hearing the same old thing all the time and go for something different. And when they do, we're ready for them. We've been in training. Spooks' Things I've Seen is out now.