He shoots from the lip

There’s no play-acting here. Like a British 50 Cent, Giggs — who also uses the name ­Hollowman — raps about what he knows, having been struck in the leg during a street shoot-out and spent a couple of years in prison for gun possession. His latest single­, Look What the Cat Dragged In, which was released this month, is characteristic in its celebration of sex, violence and expensive clothes.

So that’s Giggs, the mindless thug. The real Giggs, who turns up sans entourage to lunch at his favourite diner chain, is different. Intense and thoughtful in conversation, he retains a vestige of the nervous giggle that earned him his nickname, and on several occasions folds up a napkin and meticulously wipes up spills from the table. He also takes his responsibilities as a father seriously and is delighted by the legitimate business opportunities that have come with his success in music and his SN1 Wear clothing line and shop. “That’s how powerful the music is,” he enthuses. “I’ve got four friends and my brother doing the clothing, and they’ve got people working for them, packaging or doing runs. Then you’ve got a cameraman. And there’s more. And, man, they were drug-dealers, and now they’re doing this, and they’re enjoying doing this. They don’t want to sell drugs any more.” He says two other “brothers” are slipstreaming him into the music business.

Intense and thoughtful, he retains a vestige of the nervous giggle that gave him his nickname

He describes his criminal career frankly and without self-pity: “I left school and started robbing. That’s what everyone does — well, I don’t know if everyone does it, but everyone does in Peckham. I used to get arrested, and that upset my mum. So then I tried to get a job. But the opportunity was there to sell drugs.” From there, Giggs descended deeper into the gang lifestyle, until, one day: “I just stepped out of my block and the feds jumped out of some plain white van and I had a strap on me.” Out of prison, he determined to change course, and now he just raps about crime. The lyrics of his songs are written and edited over and over on his phone (“I’ve got the whole album on it,” he says, waving it proudly).

He acknowledges that his subject matter plays to vicarious thrill-seekers — “It’s a story, innit?” he says with a shrug — but insists he tells the unpalatable truth: “A lot of people think it’s just mindless violence, but this shit’s happening.”

Giggs was trying his hand in America last summer, frustrated by his lack of progress in Britain, when the buzz caused by Slow Songs, his duet with Mike Skinner, of the Streets, tempted him home. He returned to a bidding war and now reflects darkly on the capriciousness of the music industry: “No disrespect, but Mike Skinner’s hardly on the record.”

Giggs is aiming to put his past life behind him with new commercial success (HO)

Opinion is divided over Giggs’s flow, or rapping style. His deep-voiced, heavy delivery has been ridiculed, but there is no denying the conviction it carries. Giggs himself was unsure about it at first, because “everyone else is high-pitched”, but he was persuaded to stick with it. “When I’m talking about things, I mean what I say, so there’s no better way to do it,” he explains. Certainly, on his recent single Don’t Go There, the soulful singing of his American collaborator BoB works in poignant counterpoint to Giggs’s conflicted reflections on the gangster life.

Those who accuse him of a lack of skill must not have noticed the way he will construct a whole verse, or indeed song, on just two vowel sounds. It has a potent effect. His facility with beats, which he outsources to a number of producers, is betrayed when he says casually: “If I say I want an emotional beat, or something greasy, or something for the girls, they’ll know what I want.” He is a perfectionist, too. “I don’t like mistakes. I’ll have a heart attack if there’s one thing wrong.”

The police do not ban the shows, but they refuse to provide security, so a promoter will be responsible if anything goes wrong

So the big-label album’s out and things are looking up, but it nearly didn’t happen. The day before he signed his record deal with XL, the label received a warning telephone call from Trident, the police operation that deals with gun crime. “I don’t know what they said. All I know is that they [XL] nearly didn’t do the deal,” he recalls. “I was pissed off, but I knew they was going to ring. That’s what they do.”

It’s no surprise Giggs feels the police have it in for him. He cannot do shows in London, and his spring tour this year was cancelled. The police do not ban the shows, but they refuse to provide security, so a promoter will be responsible if anything goes wrong. It has the same effect. Giggs plugs away, though, and says his hit rate for gigs is about “50-50 — the ones they find out about, they cut off; the ones they don’t, I do”.

In any case, he sees no other option. “You probably think, ‘Why don’t you go out and get a job?’, but you’re not getting a job with gun charges,” he says emphatically. “I’ve had loads of wars in the streets, thinking that it’s all for the better, but nothing gets better. Things just stay the same. When I’m doing music, it’s actually helping. So this is the only thing I can do, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for myself.”

We’re used to hearing X Factor contestants say: “Music is all I want to do.” From Giggs, that claim has a lot more resonance.

Let Em Ave It is out now. Go to ukrecordshop.com to buy this and Giggs’s earlier recordings