HYDRO has the sort of tough background any rapper would be proud to boast about. He avoided poverty because his mother took three jobs, but he fell in with the wrong crowd after his alcoholic father died. Yet Hydro is not from the Bronx - he is from Bellshill.

Now the 26-year-old stands on the brink of stardom because he will tour next year with American star Rihanna.

"I bumped into her last year in a shopping mall in Los Angeles, just before her hit Umbrella topped the charts and she was lovely," he says.

Hydro has just released his debut album, Crucial. It features American rapper Busta Rhymes and Aussie songstress Chenelle and was worked on by producer L.E.S, who previously recorded with Will Smith.

But Hydro's road to success has been full of incident, from seeing friends shot in New York to working with some of music's biggest names and setting up his own record label in Glasgow.

However, his music is a world away from the rap that glamorises guns and violence. He says: "I don't dislike all the dancing girls and all that soldier boy stuff, but it's nonsense. It's not teaching the kids the right things."

He is still proud of where he comes from. "People always say I'm a UK rapper, I'd rather they say I am a Glasgow rapper. I want to take Scotland's rap music on my back."

Those dreams of glory seemed a long way away when he was younger. Growing up in Bellshill, hip-hop was a major part of his life from a young age, as his father was a huge fan. But his dad died when Hydro was nine and after that the youngster struggled to cope.

"It was a psychological scar. But my mother is a soldier. She worked three jobs and took care of us, she made sure we had an education. We never went hungry and that was down to her being so strong."

But the polite singer is open about the problems he faced, admitting he fell in with a bad crowd. Despite doing well at school (he loved English, and wrote poetry from a young age), he left Bellshill behind and moved to New York to stay with family over there - only to fall into trouble again, living among drug addicts and criminals.

But music came to his rescue when he signed up to a scheme for underprivileged kids run by American record label Def Jam. He worked in the office in an internship.

The singer recalls: "People like 50 Cent and Alicia Keys were just starting out, so I got to see these people as they were starting to make their way up.

"Kanye West was there and he was just like me, a star-struck kid meeting his heroes.

"When you get to see them as people and talk to them, they are just regular people, who have problems like the rest of us."

But while his career was on the rise, his life outside work was still fraught.

"A couple of my friends were shot at an early age and it shook me up. But it gave me a reality check, and made me want to do better things with my life.

"I went back to Def Jam and one of my superiors said, You don't want to be a guy still wearing a hoodie aged 40 with no money and hooked on drugs. Why don't you put yourself through university?'"

So he came back to Glasgow and completed a BA Honours degree at Caledonian University, before returning to America.

He adds: "I was living in Harlem. One time I returned to my flat and there was blood on the floor and a chalk outline there. So I booked my ticket back to Scotland."

That decision has paid off. Now the singer wants to give something back through his Underdogg Entertainment company, which aims to help teenagers forge a career in the music world.

He said: "We want to get kids involved. Instead of standing on the streets drinking and holding a knife, they could be in the studio recording or doing some club tours and educating themselves in the music business."

Hydro has come a long way from his past.

"It's not a dream any more, it's a reality for me."