Tinie Tempah thinks success has turned him "into a bit of a monster".
The chart-topping rapper has achieved seven number one singles in the UK, and has admitted fighting to stay on top made him feel as though he would "die" if he failed to top the charts.
He said: "I just felt like, ‘S**t, man, I need to keep going, I’ve f***ing put my foot in it now.
"I gotta keep going and it needs to get bigger and bigger and better and better.’
"I probably turned into a bit of a monster for achieving what I set out to achieve and trying to better and top every single record that had come before.
"I almost felt like, if that’s not the result I got, then I was going to get dropped or like I was gonna die or something. Or my mum was gonna be p***ed.
"Like, ‘Your last one was No1, why isn’t this one No1?’"
The ‘Written in the Stars’ hitmaker is changing his ways now, and has decided to drop Tempah from his name to reflect his more chilled out approach.
Tinie – whose real name is Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu – added: "I just feel it’s a new decade, I feel like I’ve almost peeled a layer off of myself and Tempah was gone with it.
"It didn’t seem fitting anymore. I’m not angry anymore. I’m joking …"
And the rapper says his decision to step back from being obsessed with success comes after he welcomed a daughter in 2018.
Speaking to The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre Column, he said: "I released my third album, and I was like, I want to take some time out.
"Doing normal life things like having a baby, I realised that I am normal, I’m not a f***ing robot.
"I guess it just allowed me to relax a bit and the blinkers are still very much on, that’s just the way I’m programmed.
"But for me, this sound is very new. It’s very new for you to hear, but it’s not very new for me to make if that makes sense."
Tinie Tempah: Success made me a monster
