Zayn Malik left One Direction in 2015, making headlines and breaking fans hearts. The reasoning before was creative differences, and now Malik shared his point of view in a recent interview on Call Her Daddy. The interview with Alexandra Cooper marks his first in six years, per E! News.

“There was a lot of—look I don't want to go into too much detail, but there was a lot of politics going on,” Zayn Malik said of One Direction with Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson.

“Certain people were doing certain things, certain people didn't want to sign contracts, so I knew something was happening, so I just got ahead of the curve,” Malik explained. “I was like, ‘I'm just going to get out of here. I think this is done.'…I completely selfishly wanted to be the first person to go and make my own record, if I'm being completely honest with you. I was like, ‘I'm going to jump the gun here for the first time.'”

Malik self defines as a “passive dude,” but that's not the case with his music career. “I'm serious about it and I'm competitive, so I wanted to be the first to go and do my own thing,” he said. “That was the reason—and then there was obviously underlying issues, like within our friendships too.”

Now, Malik sees the One Direction exit in a different light.

“We've been together every day for five years and we've got sick of each other, if I'm being completely honest,” he said. “We were close. We done crazy things with each other that nobody else in the world will ever understand or have those experiences that we've shared with each other, and I look back on it now in a much fonder light than I would've as I just left. There were great experiences, I had great times with them, but yeah, we just ran our course.”