Talented Tottenham rapper Chipmunk tells TIM HUGHES about success, fame and earning creative freedom.

TINIE Tempah, Tynchy Strider, Crazy Titch, Wretch 32...British rappers seem to be intent on outdoing each other in the race for less-than-glamorous nicknames, designed to draw attention to their diminutive stature or bad behaviour.

But in the race for least flattering sobriquet, there can be only one winner: Tottenham’s favourite son Chipmunk.

Toothy and talented, this goofy grime superstar and master of wordplay is one of the country’s finest hip-hop artists. Only 21 years old, he has based his reputation on skill alone, with an armful of MOBOs, a clutch of top five hits (including the heavy-hitting Until You Were Gone and chart-topper Oopsy Daisy); and a 300,000, platinum-selling debut, the reasonably titled I am Chipmunk, released while the then 18-year-old was studying hard for his A-Levels.

Next Friday, ‘Chip’, real name Jahmaal Noel Fyffe, plays Oxford’s Regal, one of the final shows at the venue, which is being converted into a church.

The show will see him preaching to the converted with words of wisdom from his debut and this year’s follow-up Transition.

The album, recorded in London and Los Angeles, features appearances from the king of Jamaican dancehall Mavado; R&B Queen Keri Hilson; Kelenna Harper from Diddy Dirty Money, singer Trey Songz, and the aforementioned Wretch 32, a mate of his from Tottenham – where Chip delighted thousands of fans by switching on the Christmas lights.

“I want everyone in Oxford to come down and have a good time,” he says.

“I don’t want people saying they are coming to watch me play, I want them to watch me have a good time!”

Chipmunk admits he has been resting for much of the day after an all-night recording session, which finally wound up at 8am.

“I am definitely on a creative streak,” he says. “Every year you have to decide you are going to make the next year even better. That’s God’s plan.”

Transition spells out in lyrical rhyme the changes Chip has been through. It is, he says, a coming of age record, marking his evolution from ambitious street MC to established star.

“I had my whole life to make my first album, but only a year to make this one, so I wanted it to reflect how much my life has changed over this last year,” he says.

His track Picture Me says it all, with its lyric: “Everybody loves an underdog until they make it. Coming from the hood, like look at what it made of us. When they see you living your dreams, they wanna wake you up.”

The rapper, who proudly admits to having written his own poetry, reels off more neatly-crafted couplets, before adding: “Transition is about turning from boy to man. I’m older and wiser now. I’ve always been cool, but now I am cooler.”

Intelligent, professional and a practicing Christian, Chip stands aside from his heavily-posturing peers. He admits he is no gangsta wannabe.

“That’s not me,” he laughs. “I don’t think I’m setting an example though. I just don’t live my life in front of a camera. I just want to show people you can make things happen by achieving what you can.”

For Chip, fame has come with success – he sings about getting a Rolex and loves to party, though tells me “I hate Champagne”.

But that’s not the point, he insists. “The best thing about being a successful artist is getting creative freedom,” he says. “There are no rules and no-one to tell you what to talk about.

“I think about what I want to say, how I want to say it, and it just comes.”

* Chipmunk plays the Regal next Friday. Tickets are £12 (£10 NUS). Support comes from emerging young Oxford acts Half Decent; Misunderstood; MVE; and 16-year-old St Gregory the Great student, Chelsea Sianga, who reached boot camp on The X Factor. Also up are Talent Oxford stars Ree-Formed.

Doors open at 7pm.