At my core, the glass isn't half-empty - it's not even what I ordered in the first place.

It's never been a point of reference to look to a man. It's not always a good thing, I suppose, but I think independence is always preferable to dependence.

I tried four times to get into the Central School of Speech and Drama before I got accepted. I started when I was 17, which was too young, in retrospect, and finally went when I was 21. I just kept plugging away. Determined? Yeah, I think I was.

If I hadn't had a baby, a part of me thinks I might have turned up on the red carpets all the time and gone, 'Hi, it's me!' Maybe other people do it because they haven't got kids and they've nowhere else to be. But because I have, I don't feel like that.

That's probably the key to our success and our longevity, sticking to our formula and what we do best, the hardcore Mobb Deep sound, rather than chasing trains. But we're always experimenting with the art and the creativity of hip-hop.

When I was 12 I worked with someone - it was actually an English teacher at my school, John Woodward. He was the only teacher in the school to have a top-of-the-range Porsche and all the trappings of success, so it was very interesting for me to find out how he did it. He was probably the wealthiest English teacher in the community.

Success is never going to come in the way your teenage self sees it.

The success of our economy shouldn't determine the success of our schools.