The sound of the lead guy’s voice reminds me of a rainy day in the British countryside. If I was a commercial director, I would have a scene with a girl walking down the street, living her life, and walking into a car insurance shop and I wanted this air of independence, I would put Mumford & Sons underneath my images.

Royce has been around for a long time. I used to play an old record of his called ‘Boom’ back in the day when I used to DJ. He’s a Detroit cat, he had a lot of underground kudos. Lyrically, he’s f—ing dope. American hip-hop just has the tradition of hip-hop. It sounds like hip-hop. U.K. hip-hop isn’t really called hip-hop, it’s called grime. Its DNA is is heavily connected to U.S. hip-hop but it’s not the same. And I don’t want it to be the same. I want it to be very much U.K.

I love Bowie. He wasn’t the greatest vocalist but he could do some interesting things with his voice. He also had great melodies and great poetry. My character on Luther is a big Bowie fan, and I think that came out of a conversation between me and [creator] Neil Cross about how much we both liked Bowie. Interestingly enough, when I lived in Britain I wasn’t into Bowie as much as when I got here [to America]. But he has such a real rock and roll, universal sound.

Lauryn Hill did a great cover, but I love the original. I grew up on Bob. He says, ‘When the rain falls, it doesn’t fall on just one man, it falls on everybody.’ And that’s a great line. It’s like, ‘It’s all good you saying s— about me, but when the rain falls it all falls on all of us,’ and I love that. I can relate to that. As I step more into the public eye with my acting, everyone’s got something to say.

Yasmin’s a new artist. She’s got a couple of singles out that have been really popular. She kind of reminds me of a very young Sade in a way. It’s just a vibe that I get from her. She writes all her music herself. It’s very laid back. She’s got a sort of nice cadence and she writes quite honestly. It sounds quite calming I think.

Kendrick Lamar is the greatest rapper alive.Confirm.

He’s an acoustic artist. He sings and plays guitar and kind of sings like a rapper. He’s dope. Another very poetic storyteller. I actually had the opportunity to meet him once and he’s a really young, unassuming cat. He doesn’t look like a pop star. You wouldn’t think he could do what he does, but his music speaks to me.

He’s a rapper from U.K. and he’s been around for a while on the underground circuit for a long time. His lyrics are just poetry. There’s some grimy sort of street hip-hop stuff and there’s a bit of pop stuff, but at the heart of all this is his lyrics, and they’re quite poetic. Quite observational. He has a couple of jams on there, like ‘Traktor,’ which is a bit more of a club vibe and he has another song called ‘Don’t Go’ that went to number one in the U.K. U.K. hip-hop doesn’t really transfer across the world. I think partly to do with the fact that the words are so London or so regional that you might have to listen to it a few times to get into it. But I think that U.K. hip-hop has a real strong presence and it’s coming up slowly, with Tinie Tempah and some other guys starting to break out a little bit.