'˜Things happen when you're in your flow' says revitalised Craig David

“Do you know what? It’s been an incredible year and a half,” the Southampton-born singer says, looking back on a period in which he scored his first top 10 single in a decade – with When The Bass Line Drops – and his first Number One album since his multi-million selling debut back in 2000. This month he’ll be touring the UK arenas, including Leeds.

Key to the remarkable turnaround in the 35-year-old’s fortunes seems to have been a move back to the UK after a sojourn in Miami.

“It wasn’t a place that was really conducive to the music that I’d grown up making,” he says of an American city where house and electronic dance music (EDM) is king and red-carpet elitism which he “wasn’t a huge fan of” ruled in nightclubs.

“Being back in the UK, and working with all these young, up-and-coming producers and song writers was like a game-changer for me and I started to create music in a way that I used to, without it being for any cause. It was just like I’m having fun making the music and enjoying it.”

Fusing that with what he calls “the TS5 element” – conceived while throwing house parties in his Miami penthouse, Tower Suite Five, where he would MC, DJ and sing over dance tracks to entertain friends – and, he says: “It’s all led to this point of doing the arena shows which have the live band and the TS5 element. It’s been crazy.”

The fanfare that David has received since the release of his latest album, Following My Intuition,is a stark contrast to the muted reaction that greeted its covers-heavy predecessor, Signed Sealed Delivered, in 2010. Though he says he “enjoyed the process” of making that record he realised his career had blown off course.

“When I listened back to the first album and songs like Rewind, Fill Me In, Seven Days and Walking Away I thought I was so entrenched in the culture and the scene and what was going on – at the time I was DJ-ing and MC-ing on the South Coast – I felt like I was speaking directly to my age group and talking to people about things that are inspiring to do and become. By the time I got to making a Motown record – and I was 26 or 27 at the time – I felt like I was off the path from what I’d got into music for.”

It took the word-of-mouth excitement that began to surround his TS5 parties in Miami then London to give David his mojo back. “It just empowered me and I just felt like I wanted to make new music again and I want to create situations that people can enjoy again. I never expected it to connect with the younger generation as much as it did. For it to connect with two generations was probably the most exciting thing about it.”

After the house parties friends began to ask David for a memento of the night so he began to post mixed on Soundcloud. “Then the next thing from Soundcloud my manager took it in a couple of radio stations and the next thing it gets played there. Then all of a sudden something that started with ‘I want to do the right thing because I’m not feeling this going to the club situation in Miami’ turned into ‘Let’s do a show in a hipster area of London to 200 people and see if this house party that works so well works to strangers in a club in this place that was at the forefront of where music was happening at the time’. When it went off the same way and the same reaction happened fast forward – boom – we were then doing the Silver Hayes stage at Glastonbury and I’m seeing 20,000 people come to it and I was like, ‘This is crazy, something is happening here’.”

Suddenly he says he could appreciate that “whenever you do the thing that you love it reacts and it plays out in reality”.

Adept use of video clips, Twitter and Instagram has also brought David closer to his audience than ever before. A session he did for BBC Radio 1Xtra’s MistaJam was a notable viral hit, as was his Live Lounge improvisation of two Justin Bieber songs. He says: “It was so natural and organic and real that again things happen when you’re in your flow and you’re not trying to think ‘If I go to the MistaJam show and I do the freestyle and maybe that happens’ and trying to gauge it life just isn’t like that, things happen that you don’t expect – and that was probably one of the biggest ones.”

Ask David about his high points of the last 18 months and he points to Following My Intuition reaching Number One – “I didn’t expect it – I was just like, ‘Do you know what? I’m just happy to be releasing new music” – and announcing an arena tour. “To see the tickets sell so fast as well I’ve been overly grateful, it’s just an amazing moment,” he says.

Craig David plays at the First Direct Arena, Leeds on March 31. For details visit www.firstdirectarena.com or www.craigdavid.com