Bushey-born rapper and MC Greg Rose is better known to an ever-growing fan-base simply as Skilf.

In the last couple of years he has carved-out a hard-fought reputation on the UK Hip Hop scene; releasing acclaimed album Original Visions last year and gobbling up more than his fair share of column inches along the way.

This, I must admit, had passed me by until a mysterious call from his A & R man a couple of weeks back.

Hip Hop, as I’ve said before, is far from my cup-of-tea, but, fair’s fair, I was so taken in by said caller’s enthusiasm that I just had to a take a listen to new three track EP Slow Me Down.

To cut a long story short I found out a couple of days later that the passionate A & R man was, in fact…Greg all along.

It’s a pretty shabby deception but, I must admit, I liked it. I liked it a lot. I also liked (a lot) Slow Me Down.

“You’ve got to think outside the box with these things,” explains the 24-year-old from his new base in Brighton. “It’s a tough business and I’m just trying to get noticed.”

With an approach as brazen as that it’s just as well that a) he’s got more than enough talent to back it up with and b) he’s such a nice bloke.

Skilf succeeds where many of his contemporaries fail: by broadening the appeal of what remains to many (including me) a mysterious and even threatening sub culture.

Fusing laugh-aloud lyrics and first-rate musicianship he creates a sound that’s as easy to relate to as it is hard not to enjoy.

Fuelled by unabashed candour and frustration, Skilf’s work captures better than most the inherent frustrations many young people feel with the modern world; of a fractured and exploitative employment market and a distant, mendacious political elite.

Proof of this abounds on the magnificent final track Dead Ender – a comic but familiar tale of underachievement and unfulfilled ambitions set in a dead-end call centre.

“Hip Hop has always been about protest,” he continues, “right back to Public Enemy and the Civil Rights movement “People have their own view about what Hip Hop is and isn’t you should never just believe what read in the papers and see on TV – that’s not how it is – it’s a stereotype.

“I’m a Jewish white guy but that’s not what people expect – but a lot can relate to what I’m trying to do.”

Indeed, Skilf is none of the things I first imagined him to be. He’s an intelligent, educated guy from a decent home who has similar background tastes, opinions and experiences as me.

The world of Hip Hop, he says, was something that he discovered as a teenager - a natural creative progression form an early penchant for acts as diverse as Bob Dylan.

“He [Dylan] made me realise the potential of word play and the endless possibilities of storytelling. More importantly his work had a big impact on my own writing.”

This writing, Skilf explains, is targeted at everybody – including die hard guitar boys like me.

“So many people have the same experiences; of leaving university and ending up in a call centre or working in a job they hate and just waiting for the weekend. A lot of my music is about that type of frustration so I think it’s got good cross-over appeal – even if you’re new to Hip Hop and rapping.”

Skilf will be playing a series of live dates with his band Astro Physics over the next few months.

For details see www.skilf.co.uk