Yasmin kicks off 2012 with the Shy FX-produced Light Up (The World). This year will also see her release her debut album.

MistaJam.com’s Sam Moir caught up with her to chat about her career to date and what this year has in store.

What do you make of the support you’ve received early on in your career?

It’s been fantastic. I’ve been lucky enough to DJ for Pharrell and N*E*R*D. They’re people who I admire and some of the best producers of my generation so that’s really flattering. Then there’s DJs like MistaJam and Annie Mac who have fantastic taste in music. They’re real musos and play some great music – for them to support me as well is just an honour.

How are you splitting your time between DJing and production?

A lot of DJs get the urge to create their own music. It just comes from knowledge of music and a lot of tracks and styles to reference from. I’m pretty good at keeping both up. Making music takes a lot of time and a lot of dedication and I can have club residencies. I always make the time to do DJ gigs because it keeps me hungry and keeps me passionate. It’s something that I really enjoy doing.

How’s the album coming on?

The album’s coming on really well – the last year has been a real learning process and evolution of myself. I’m writing much better songs now I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of exciting people. For me, it’s about mixing great songs with really interesting production. Songwise, my style is very melodic and catchy. I try and tell a story – I’m not one of those people who use metaphors and analogies. It’s all real life. It’s a long process but I’m very adamant to get it right and say what I want to say with this album. It takes time but we’re getting there.

Where would you say it’s influenced from?

I reflect on things that make sense to me. For me, it’s a lot of 90s influences, a lot of reverb, there’s dub and reggae influences on the album, nothing too heavily electronic. It’s got an organic feel to it. A lot of the album’s inspiration is taken from tracks in the 90s era and lyrically, it’s very honest.

You’ve collaborated with Ms Dynamite on Light Up, how features heavy will the album be?

I’ve only done one collaboration with Ms Dynamite so far and I think I’m going to keep it minimal on the features. I want to showcase myself – I’m friends with a lot of people in the music industry and I could probably get a million features if I wanted them. But it’s important for me to stand alone and off the back of my own work. I always want to collaborate with other artists and work with other people, but there’s plenty of time to do that in the future.

Throughout the album process, so far, how would you say you’ve developed as an artist?

More in my songwriting – I never studied music and I wasn’t particularly great at English. My skills as a songwriter are naturally one of the most important things for me – to be recognised as a good writer. I also really want to learn guitar.

Where do you see yourself going with this album?

That’s up to the people who listen to it. Personally, I want this album to travel across the world and I want people all over the world to hear it and connect with it and I want it to allow me to get on the road, tour and bring the music live to people. If it does that, then I’m happy.

By the end of 2012, what are you looking to achieve?

Get the album out and I’d love to do my own headline tour. I’m speaking about other projects at the moment like visual and TV documentaries. I really want to get hands on with my upcoming videos.

Buy Light Up (The World) | Yasmin on Twitter | Sam Moir on Twitter