Do you think there could be a point where your lyrical content could alienate the audience?

Yes, I do. We have been very careful to try and not bang away at people all the time. But my religious believes are all inclusive, and I think that's why people take to it and warm to it. When I'm saying 'God is a DJ, this is my church, this is where I heal my hurts', everybody knows what I'm talking about. And when I'm standing on stage, in front of three thousand people, and I go 'this is my church', they are going 'mine too'. So I can't see who this could alienate.
I tell you who it alienates: it alienates journalists. Journalists think that angry is cool. Journalists love cynicism. They just love it, they swear by it. So, certain journalists are going 'this fucking hippy, dippy, crap, trippy, shit: what is that'? But they haven't been to a gig. And they haven't seen ten thousand people going fucking bezerk as one. So, they don't get it. A lot of people actually have to come to a live show to actually get what this is. This is not some dippy, trippy shit. This is really powerful, when you stand up there and say: 'this is my church'. And you get the reaction of the crowd. It's like a wind. It's picking at your clothes as you are standing on the stage. It's incredible.
It's hard to see that those who get it could be alienated by it. I think it is part of the appeal for them. Those people that don't get it, it will definitely be one of the reasons why they hate Faithless. I mean, we got told that Leftfield, Basement Jaxx, Chemical Brothers, they have not been banging in people's heads about what they should and shouldn't be doing. That's why they are so successful, and Faithless is so shit. But I hardly see why just in order to please a couple of trendy journalists, that I have to chat a lot of meaningless old crap. Why? When I'm eighty or whatever and I'm near to death, what's going to be important for me is, when I put on that record, can I still be proud of it? And not 'don't ever let me hear that record again ever, cause the lyrics are shit. I mean we made millions....'.

You mentioned being a rapper a few times. So do you consider yourself to be more of a rapper or a poet?

A rapper. If you talked to KRS-One about it, he probably disagrees. Fair enough. I don't care. I love hip hop. If some of the greatest hip hoppers of our generation would say 'that Maxi Jazz is one of the worlds best hip hopper', it would make me so happy. But at the end of the day, I am just making my music. Hip hop is a huge influence on me, and everything that I do and that comes out of my mouth is rapping.
For me, the biggest word in hip hop and remains the biggest word in hip hop is fresh. You don't hear that word anymore. Back in the 80s, when I first discovered it, fresh was everything. If a tune was fresh, you didn't even bother to listen to it. When the old man said it's fresh, you had never heard anything like it before. And people now are onto that lowest common denominator thing, cause you can make a few quick sex and violence sales. And that infected my 'baby'. Sadly she got a disease now. I still love her though.
There are some amazing hip hop artists, like Mos Def, or a guy called J-Live. Man, he's just a genius, you know. But they don't get the major radio plays, that the other cats get.

I got this idea, and you will probably disagree, that you are a modern day Gil-Scott Heron, on dance music, who's less political though.

I'm very flattered (smile). But I don't know. As you said, Gil is a very political guy. I want people to rise up and to awake too. And my personal believe is that politics is utterly relevant to that process. If your aspiration is for people to be strong enough to think for yourself, and to act for themselves, then eighty percent of the bullshit we get given by the politicians absolutely wont hold water. We always get the politicians that we deserve. But once we start to awaken, as I said, if you become one with yourself, you become one with everybody else. Once you are one with everyone else, no politician can tell you a goddamn thing, he has to follow what you are doing. So that is my intend, to get people thinking for themselves, and to also see their own genius, their own brilliance. Everybody has got it. And if you start to believe in it, it'll start to come out. And you will not even be able to help it.

Maybe another thing, that puzzles me for some time, and you might know: how the heck did Mark The 45 King, hear that Dido song?

You got me there son (smile). I don't know. I haven't got a clue. That whole Dido hip hop thing got us all completely mystified. And it's just one of these things when you are in rhythm with life, I guess anything can happen.
Rollo is really happy at the moment, because Mark The 45 King has come up to sample some of his beats, and some other producer that he really likes as well, that wanted to know about if they could sample this or that. And Rollo is just walking around smiling: 'I'm the toast of the Bronx' (laugh). 'I sample these beats off of them anyway, and now they are sampling them back'. So he's really happy.
Dido said this amazing thing: she was asked by her management thing what she wanted for her Christmas present or birthday present, can't remember, and she used to hang with Eminem, Dre and Mark The 45 King. And one of them had this huge gold chain with lots of studs in it, with their name on it. So she said, she just wants a big gold chain, so that she can hang with her hip hop cats, and be their with her chain (laugh).

How much are you still into hip hop?

Very much. Even down to the fact that a lot of it is mainstream. M.O.P. being successful just turns me on. I loved them guys for years. I usually don't really like gangsta rap, but I love them guys, because they are funny (smile). It's like cartoon aggression, like Tom and Jerry. It's incredibly violent, but you know they got bad powers, but you know good damn well, when the leave that studio, they go straight home to their wife and kids. It's like cartoon stuff.
Biggie Smalls as well. He had this huge sense of humour with his work. And even though his stuff is really chilling, I liked him. I thought he was a brilliant wordsmith. A genius with words and metaphors, and I'm sorry he is dead.

Do you catch some UK hip hop?

Yeah, Black Twang, Skitz. Skitz is cool. He used to DJ with Jerry Jammers, a hip hop thing in Brixton. It's now closed down forever, but it just keeps moving from place to place. I also catch Pogo, DJ Business is my buddy for a long time. I'm still well into UK hip hop, I just don't get that much time to check it out anymore.

Will you ever do a direct hip hop album?

Certainly. It'll be the next thing that I do. I have always done hip hop for myself. And what everyone else wanted to do, I did with them. But I will certainly do my own hip hop album. I started about five or six tracks. I found some samples that I really like. So I quickly put it down on the sampler, got a beat, and had fun with it a little bit, make a little track and stick it on a disc. So I got like six things, that eventually will metamorphose further, into something very, very different probably.
I got lots of ideas about what I wanna do. I wanna push the envelope with it a little bit, with vocal techniques and production techniques, and make it all sound a little bit different. I can't wait (smile).