Photo courtesy of Big Dada

Wiley is the people’s prince of London’s underground grime scene, but his latest album, Evolve Or Be Extinct, is being launched by a song that ditches the genre’s predilection for sinister sounds in favor of an uptempo attack on the clubs. Titled “Boom Blast,” it’s an energetic, motivational anthem-in-the-making. Fittingly, the song was originally intended to be a house track.

“This song came from a remix someone wanted me to feature on,” says Wiley from his home base in London. “They sent me a beat and I actually put that vocal over it. But then the person was peeing around, taking too long, so I said I can’t let this happen to me.” So instead he laid his vocal over a beat his old school friend Most Wanted Mega had sent him. Despite not being completely convinced by the outcome at first, his label loved the track and anointed it to single status.

“Boom Blast” isn’t the first time Wiley’s switched up grime’s traditional dark image, with 2008′s club-styled “Wearing My Rolex” breaking through to the U.K. mainstream. But he says that anyone accusing him of selling-out with “Boom Blast” is missing the point. “It’s not my attempt to make an out-and-out number one,” he says. “There’s parts of the song in the ad libs where I pretend that I’m being cheesy, like rapping like a house or garage MC. I put that element of humor in there.”

Evolve or Be Extinct is out now on Big Dada.