What were your first thoughts when you were asked to do the score?

My first thoughts were "I'm not black, I'm not from Harlem and writing a new score for such a popular film is a huge responsibility" . It was a real concern, as I knew how important "Shaft" was to black American culture. Also, the original score is so well-loved, well revered, and I had to get to grips with how I could improve on that.

So how did you tackle that problem?

I spoke to Isaac Hayes and the film's director John Singleton. I was upfront with them, pointing out the obvious cultural difference, that I wasn't Isaac Hayes and that I wasn't around when the original "Shaft" came out. However I assured them that I understood the film and I thought I knew what would make it work musically. Something contemporary, but with a 70s vibe.

You only had two weeks to write the music, do you think that had an effect on the score?

There was a lot of pressure on them and me. If I messed it up, there was no time to do anything else. But there was something about the urgency of it that added something to the score. "Shaft" is an urgent, funky film. The score was all written in New York in Times Square. It's incredibly noisy, dirty and fast-paced, all the things that I remembered seeing when I watched "Starsky and Hutch" and "Kojak". So I tried to weave similar references into the music, which worked.

More talk about Bond and David Arnold's Future Projects.