SINGAPORE — It’s not often that you stumble upon a budding young talent who isn’t afraid to say exactly what’s on his mind. But 17-year-old rapper and actor Brian Bradley, more commonly known by his stage name Astro, or The Astronomical Kid, is refreshingly, if alarmingly, honest.

When he was a contestant on the first season of The X Factor USA, for example, he said he would be bigger than Jay-Z. Call it youthful arrogance, if you will, but Bradley said he’s still very cocky.

“But when you’re younger, you’re just really uncontrollable,” he said. “I’m still really cocky, I just care less than I did when I was young, where I felt that I had to push everyone out so I could be the best ever. Now, I feel like I’m the best and that p***es people off. I have a song called Yes I Know My G and that pretty much antagonises everyone who thinks I’m cocky.”

Bradley isn’t the least bit afraid to face the flak to pursue his passion. He refers to rapping as his “main thing”, despite having turned to acting in recent months. “It’s inevitable that I become a rapper. It has surrounded my whole life,” he said. “It’s something that I couldn’t stay away from. My favourite song when I was five was Gimme The Loot by Biggie Smalls. I didn’t even know what that song was about! I thought it was about people at train stations! But I loved it.”

But Bradley, who stars in the kids’ movie Earth To Echo, stated that it wasn’t hard to make the transition from rapping to acting, saying that being on the big screen helps him with his rap career. “People will watch TV shows or movies that I’m in and stumble upon my music. I’m not confused about which is more serious to me, because rapping is my life — I live and breathe hip-hop. Even when I’m in acting mode, I’m in rapping mode.”

And what about that solo album then? Bradley has put out a couple of small projects over the past few years, including 88 and Don’t Test Me, most of which were pretty well received by netizens online, who dubbed him the “future of real hip-hop”.

“It’ll probably be a while till I put out an album!” he said. “I’ve put out an EP called Computer Era and I’m actually dropping the first video soon called 88. I’ll be building up my fan base a little more, get more people on the boat and rock with what I’m doing. I’ll definitely put out an album eventually.”

In the meantime, Bradly is focused on the new crime thriller A Walk Amongst Tombstones, in which he stars alongside Liam Neeson.

“Liam is pretty awesome. He does a lot — I don’t know how he keeps his sanity the way he does. Cool dude, humble person,” he said of his co-star. “The crazy thing is that before I worked with him, I hadn’t actually seen any of his work, but he was my mum’s favourite actor. So she was going ‘Oh my God!’ when she realised I would be working with him. I was expecting him to be on some extra-famous attitude, but he’s very cool, calm and collected.”

Bradley is also filming a brand new comedy-drama television series on Fox, about a group of teens living together as patients in a paediatric ward. “I play a kid called Dash Hosney, who has cystic fibrosis. He’s one of those adventurous kids, but also one of the sickest ones there. He’s crazy though, like YOLO. He does whatever he wants and one of his jobs is to basically p*** people off.

“That was very easy to play, because I love p***ing people off ... So that was awesome!”

Earth To Echo is in cinemas now.