Dynamite comes in this package

Hits in the early noughties and a five-year hiatus, for many the name Ms Dynamite was long relegated to the "blast from the past" pile.

Needless to say a call from her manager to say the London lass was unable to do an interview due to "an overwhelming urge to song write" came as a pleasant surprise.

Two and a half hours after our originally scheduled chat, Niomi Arleen McLean-Daley was done. Not forever, but just for today. She hoped.

"It's annoying," she said, apologising for her delay. "It's the burden of being a musician, because when the moment takes you, you just have to go with it. If I don't, then it plagues me and I find it hard to do anything else."

Ahead of her opening spot for the Scissor Sisters tonight, she struggled to sleep, her plush Abu Dhabi hotel room doubling as a recording studio.

"All night," she said exasperated. "It got me all night. I slept at 6am this morning, that's when the inspiration finally let me go. Even then it was only pure exhaustion which let me sleep. I dreamt songs and then I woke at midday to more songs. Don't get me wrong, I prefer it when the inspiration takes you hostage in this way. That's the best place you can be. The bad part is when the inspiration isn't coming."

Although tired — not at all cranky — the 30-year-old says it's better thick and fast than not at all, adding watching her "be inspired" would make for interesting viewing.

"I must look like a crazy person," she laughed. Not able to play an instrument, Dynamite relies solely on her voice as her writing tool. "I stand and make crazy sounds with my voice. I'm sometimes a piano, sometimes a drum, with bits of tunes and lyrics in between. I must look like a madwoman."

Recording directly into a Dictaphone before scribbling down any lyrics on what she cutely calls "paper scraps" she's the first to admit she may not have made friends of her hotel room neighbours — on either side.

So, can the UAE be credited with this latest burst of creative juices? "It is all about Abu Dhabi," she said. "I am often inspired when I travel, but this place in particular has really gotten under my skin this time. The weather, the culture, the fact I know it is my son's favourite place to go on holiday. It has conjured lots of feelings. Lots of memories. It's like a kind of energy, which is hard to explain."

Inspiration coming thick and fast, Dynamite is far from the early 00s whim we may have assumed.

Her music career was an accident, she tells me. "When I was 17, I agreed to perform on a friend's radio station. When I look back now, I was terrified. I didn't know what I was doing." She soon convinced herself, her friend and the rest of the UK.

Experimenting with a singing voice, softer and more melodic than the harsh Jamaican lyrics she became famous for lending to garage tracks, she eventually signed to a major label, who released her debut album in June 2002. Three months later and Ms Dynamite became the first-ever black female solo artist to win the Mercury music prize.

Nervousness to adrenaline

With the help of a simple introduction, it was one song in particular which captured the world. "I'm Ms Dy-na-mi-tee-ee," it went.

Watching Ms Dynamite belt out the echo-laced notes of the self-titled hit, it's hard to believe this London lass lacked confidence.

"I would come off stage and think to myself it was the worst thing I'd ever done," she said. "I thought I was crap. People would come up to me and say I was great, but I didn't ever believe it myself."

With age came maturity, motherhood and finally confidence.

"I still get nervous, but in a good way," she said about stepping on stage in front of thousands of people. "I've learnt to channel my nervous energy into adrenaline, which only enhances what comes out when you get on the stage."

It's been more than six years since the release of her second album, Judgement Days, in October 2005, soon after which she pulled the plug on her label, cancelled live appearances and disappeared from the music scene without a trace.

However, she didn't disappear completely. She had a race-track collision with the lead singer of AC/DC during the filming of the reality show The Race, which left her with head injuries, was yelled at in Hell's Kitchen, the Marco Pierre White cooking boot camp, in 2009 and lent her voice to DJ Zinc's Wile Out and Katy B's Lights on.

Now she's back, the new album release imminent. "I keep saying next year, but it is next year," she laughed, forgetting 2012 had already kicked in. "It really won't be long and I'm so very excited.

"This album has been influenced by so many things and I feel I have come so far. The biggest lesson I've learned is to find the perfect balance to trusting other people and trusting yourself. Sometimes they are right, sometimes you are right, but finding that out is essential."