"I'm working that day…I'm writing this afternoon and performing then..." he says, scanning his diary.

Michael Dann-Joseph is one of Sheffield's youngest R & B rappers, writing music since he was 13: "I started young but I wasn't very good – I started to give up but then got back into music."

"I started getting good feedback and thought 'maybe I can do something'." Joseph's first track I'm So Into You, was about a relationship with a girl whom, as he laughs ruefully, "doesn't talk to me now."

But Joseph says he has moved away from such lyrical themes: "I wanted to change, most R & B artists talk about money but I set myself a goal – I want to write about all the young people dying in the UK and all the guys that died in Sheffield – I know them. They were only teenagers – they shouldn't have died so young."

Joseph was born in Zimbabwe and moved to South Yorkshire four years ago at the age of 12.

"At the time I left Zimbabwe it was good," says Joseph, "It was one of the best African countries – we used to have a swimming pool and have pool parties."

He says: "I'm not ashamed of my country but I am ashamed of what it has turned into.

"To do my music would have been difficult in Zimbabwe – in England there's all the equipment."

He's made the most of South Yorkshire's cultural resources. Working alongside Red Tape Studios and the BiG (the Make It Our Business support organisation for budding businessmen/ artists), Joseph has recorded All I Need and And I Pray, the latter addressing the murders of young people.

Michael Dann-Joseph plays at the Mega Centre tonight.