AceShowbiz - U.K. hip-hop stars N-Dubz had to fight to keep British slang in the lyrics for their new songs - because the phrases totally baffled their American producers. The band have recorded a new U.S.-friendly album called "Love. Live. Life.", which they hope will launch their career Stateside. They worked with a number of famous American music producers including Jean Baptiste and Salaam Remi, and their 'street' speak caused confusion in the studio - but rapper Dappy was determined not to change his lyrics.

He tells Britain's Daily Star, "We worked with some massive names... and to be honest it was tough at times trying to get our lingo across to them. We were saying stuff like, 'I swear down, man,' but they didn't know what we were talking about. They didn't like the slang and tried to get us to talk proper English. We got our vocab up to scratch a bit, but we also said to them, 'We come from the country that made the English language, just trust us'."

"We put our creative foot down and in the end lost none of our Englishness."