Toddla T had an impressive 2009. With a Fabric Mix, a debut album and a grueling tour schehdule, the Sheffield native talks to Shortie about plans for the future and his musical influences.

’09 was a good year man, album, Fabric mix… What’s new for ’10? I hear you got a label coming?

I’m doing a little label called ‘Girls Music’ with my boy who actually signed me initially. That’s not really the big deal though that’s just like whacking out loads of little things. It’s not got massive amounts of money behind it or promo or anything, it’s just a little side thing really.

I’m just about to sign to a new label, doing a lot more radio work for Radio 1, a lot more production, and also done a bunch of stuff for Mz. Dynamite. It’s kind of the same thing but a bit more levelled out though rather than mental out of the blue kind of thing.

What about the Radio show? It seem's to be going well. Anything planned for that?

Yeah the shows are sick man. That’s the third Thursday of every month so that’s cool. I’m also doing a lot of covering for other DJs when they’re away such as Ras Kwame and Mary Anne Hobbs and a few bits for BBC in general, I’m just enjoying it, it’s wicked.

Who’s idea was the chart attack (chart mash up) thing?…

That was mine; me and a mate just came up with it one day. I’m just trying to sort it out as we speak because I’ve got a beat for my next show and the vocalist who was supposed to go on it has flopped. It’s a version of that Rage Against The Machine tune that got to number 1 and the beat is absolutely sick so I’m literally scrolling through everyone I know trying to get a vocalist before tomorrow night but it’s all good, it’s all bless.

Obviously there’s a huge Jamaican influence in your music. Who did you listen to growing up?

Well it was hip-hop initially when I was a teenager, then when I hit like 15/16 I started to listen to a lot more Reggae, so I kind of got into it like that. I went to Jamaica last year for the first time and got a bunch of recording's over there, proper heavy.

Heard a lot of those dubplates you got when you were over there. How did you hook those up?

The dubs were different to tunes. All the tunes that I did, I did in Kingston then this geezer picked us up from Montego Bay to take us to Nagril to our hotel and he was a DJ so he was like ‘If you want some dubs I work at a studio so can sort you out’ so I paid a bit of money and just got bare dubplates.

It was simple man, every other person’s an artist over there and every other artist is a wicked artist so the choice is crazy like as long as you’ve got a bit of money. You’ve just got to go over there and get stuck in, it’s heavy!

Next: Toddla T talks Sheffield and moving to London