I found out quite quickly that there was a sinister side to my fame with So Solid Crew. I knew from growing up in south London what a dangerous place the street can be and, after my experiences as a kid being kidnapped for a day by some local boys and later stabbed, I guess I began to get paranoid for my safety. But there's an old saying: just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you. And it soon transpired that somebody was, quite definitely, out to get me.

I'd written a lyric. Girls who don't make any money are called "pigeons", and guys who are broke are called "scrubs". This lyric was about pigeons and scrubs, and I was using it on the radio. One day, somebody pointed out to me that some guy had taken my lyric, changed the structure of it around a bit, and was using it as his own. So I sent a shout out to this guy saying, "Hey, man, don't use my lyrics. Use your own lyrics." This guy heard what I said and must have taken offence. He took it upon himself to wait outside my house in his car with a friend and a gun. I arrived home and parked - I was with my girlfriend Natalie and my son Shayon at the time - and as I got out of the car he pulls up and calls my name: "Asher!" I looked round to see him sitting in the passenger seat, pointing the gun at me.

He says to me that he's taken the lyric now, that it's his lyric. He gave me an ugly smile and said, "What are you going to do about it?"

I shrugged. "What do you think I'm going to do about it? You've got a gun pointed at me. Take the lyric, it's yours. I'll write another one."

But that wasn't the end of it. Every time he saw me, he'd do basically the same thing, and as we lived in the same area, just up the street from each other, he saw me a lot.

Soon after that I started getting death threats on the phone. I don't know if it was from the same person, but, when you get a death threat, it doesn't really matter who it's from - it just scares you.

On another occasion I'm in my car just outside my house in Brixton and something smashes through the back windscreen. My immediate reaction is that it's gunshot, so I duck, and then one by one all my windows get smashed in. It's boys throwing bricks into my car. They all start running off and, thinking the coast is clear, I get out of my car. But then one of them stops and looks back. I see that he has a gun in his hand and he's shouting, "Come on, let's finish him, let's kill him!"

He starts coming back to get me, but his friends carry on running away. When he saw that they weren't coming back to help him he must have got scared and started running with them. I'd had a second lucky escape.

These experiences were becoming more and more common as I became more and more well known. It seemed that certain people resented my success and, as their threats became more and more vicious, I became more and more paranoid. I figured that, one day, they were going to get me when there weren't that many people around, and I thought, I'm not taking that chance, man.

So I took it upon myself to make some calls and try and find out where I could get me a gun. Eventually I found this guy who could get me what I wanted.

The weapon he sold me was a pistol - just an ordinary starting pistol that you can buy in any sport shop, but it had been converted. I paid £1,300 for it. After I got arrested, I told the police how much it cost and they started laughing at me. It seems I'd been well and truly ripped off, but at the time I didn't care. You have to remember that I got the gun because I feared for my life, my family's lives and the lives of my friends. I felt that if I had a gun I would be equal to anyone who wants to kill me - I would have as much chance of killing them, of defending myself. It's weird, because I was so anxious to have the gun, but when it was in my possession I was terrified of it. I was shit scared in case it went off. I had it so that I could defend myself - the last thing I wanted was for it to cause anybody any harm.

The gun stayed in my possession for some time. Of course, I never had cause to use it, but somehow it made me feel safer, made me feel that at least I could fight back now if I needed to. And the weapon stayed out of sight - until July 30 2001.

I had an interview up in London's West End, so I drove into town with Natalie. I don't know what it was that made me take the gun with me - it was one of those days when you feel that nothing can happen to you, but I suppose those are the days that you're most likely to have something happen. After all, it took five minutes just to walk from my house to the car, and five minutes is a long time when you've been getting death threats.

So I went up west, did the interview and on the way back I said to Natalie that I needed to get something to drink. I pulled the car over into a parking bay, jumped out and went into a shop. When I got back, there was a traffic warden by the car and a parking ticket on the windscreen.

I started arguing with the warden. I said I'd only been there for two minutes, why did I have to pay? The warden said that the ticket was already in the system, and I just got more and more upset and started shouting at him. The traffic warden dug his heels in, and after a while I started laughing at him. I got back in the car, grabbed my bottle of water and put it through the sun roof, pretending to throw it at him.

At this point, another traffic warden came along - I think he was the guy who called the police. I drove off, and I got as far as Haymarket when all of a sudden these police cars are all over me. I pull over, and suddenly I'm surrounded by guns and everything. "Hands on the wheel!" one of them shouts at me.

"What? What have I done?" I honestly couldn't see what I'd done to warrant all this. They took me out of the car and said I'd pulled a gun on a traffic warden. "What are you talking about?'

"You just pulled a gun on a traffic warden." "You're talking shit, brother. I never pulled a gun on nobody!" "OK," said the policeman. "Well, we're going to search you for a gun."

My heart went into my mouth. I knew they'd find it, and sure enough, when they emptied Natalie's handbag, there it was. They found it straight away and hauled us in. I was in the police station for two days. They questioned me for hours: how did I get the gun, why did I pull it on a traffic warden? I just told them the truth - including that I didn't pull it on the traffic warden - and eventually they let me out on bail. Ten thousand pounds.

I had to wait nine months for the case to come to trial. All that time I felt like a dagger was hanging over my head. I knew I didn't have any hope of being let off, but somewhere deep inside me I held on to the hope that the judge would be lenient on me given the circumstances that led me to have the gun in the first place. The thought of going to jail was too much for me to bear - the idea of not seeing my friends, not seeing my family, the kids. I tried to throw myself into my work, to concentrate on my art and try and make something positive out of the experience, but all the time I had the threat that I might be going to jail hanging over me.

Eventually I was sentenced. They threw out the charge of threatening the traffic warden with a gun. That was a relief to me, because I honestly hadn't done so, but I think it helped my case a bit that everybody hates traffic wardens. So all they could do me for was possession, and the judge took a pretty dim view of me carrying the weapon. Judge Geoffrey Rivlin sentenced me to 18 months in prison, and on that day I learned three important lessons: don't carry a gun, don't mess with traffic wardens and always pay your meters!

So I went to jail, sentenced to 18 months, I did nine. I was at Feltham Young Offenders' Institute on remand for a month but, to be honest, I didn't really experience life there because I got segregated the minute I arrived. The screws had heard the inmates saying they were going to kill me as soon as I got there, so they took me away from the general prison population and so I never got an idea of what the place was really like - I couldn't go to the gym, I couldn't go to the church, I couldn't meet anyone new.

The weird thing was that I would sit in my cell and read stories in the newspaper where inmates were saying they'd beaten me up the day before - and I'd been in my cell all day and hadn't seen a single person. I read that I'd got a black eye, and I just thought, "Shit, I'm glad I'm not me."

After a month I went to Rugby Young Offenders' Institute, which was much better for me as I was allowed into the general prison population. A lot of people there, including the prison staff, had respect for me - I was even asked for autographs the day I arrived so I knew as soon as I got there that things were going to be cool.

But that didn't mean that life was plain sailing. If you show any sign of weakness, there are guys there who are going to make your life hell. You've got to be tough from day one. I went in there with a positive attitude. I was going to use my time well, to think about my responsibilities, and what I ought to be taking more seriously, and make sure that I never ended up in prison again.

For some people, it doesn't work like that; some people go into prison and come out just knowing more about crime. But I didn't want to learn about that stuff so, if I heard someone talking about crime, I'd just say, "Fuck that, I don't want to learn about that. That's not me, I'm an artist, brother, do you get me?" That was my attitude - I wasn't going to let prison change me, and people respected that.

I worked in the prison kitchen, making the food. Life consisted of getting up, going to work for three hours, lunch, an hour's rest and then back to work for another three hours. It's hard, especially when all you want to do is hug your kids and your girl. But you can't think like that.

You've got to get your mind around the fact that you aren't going to see the ones you love, and so you end up thinking, Fuck everyone, fuck the world, fuck my girlfriend. It sounds harsh, but you have to do it, because, if you dwell on your situation, if you dwell on the fact that you're in prison and you're not going to see them, it'll eat you up inside. That's how suicide cases happen.

When you've got so much time to think, you overthink: what's she doing now, who's she with? When I was inside, my son broke his arm, and I just went nuts. The prison staff had to restrain me because I wouldn't calm down. I wanted to phone him, asap, just check he was all right, but it wasn't phone time, and I just had to deal with it.

I know that the stigma of having gone to prison will always be with me. When I was inside, I used to call my mum and say, "Look at your boy, Mum, I'm famous, just like I always wanted to be." She'd laugh because it was true, I always wanted to be famous, and I always wanted to be in the paper, but I never thought that it would take this to do it. Now I'm more infamous than famous.

It's stupid really - I'm not a gangster. I've done some bad things, I may not have always chosen the right path, but come on, man, I'm not a threat to anyone, I'm not a loose cannon. Just take the time to talk to me - give me a chance to explain why I had the gun in the first place.

· From Asher D: So Solid, My Dangerous Life With So Solid Crew, published by John Blake, £12.99.