[image]
[title]‘Is it strangling me?’
A five-foot-long carpet python is coiling itself around Stefflon Don’s chest. She appears unphased: her voice is calm, her face upturned and still, standing like a life-sized Oscars trophy under the Fitzrovia Chapel’s golden mosaic ceiling.
It’s a strange scene for a Wednesday evening. Sunlight filters in through stained glass, the windows showing scenes of Saint Paul and Saint Christopher. Drake’s ‘Rich Baby Daddy’ plays from a tinny Bluetooth speaker, and the snake (named Diesel, four-and-a-half years old, from Hackney), is the centre of attention – not the superstar rapper, despite her having a cool six-and-a-half million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Diesel writhes behind her left ear, his small head darting. But Stephanie Victoria Allen seems more concerned about other things. ‘My eye makeup is giving: ‘‘I’ve had a night out’’, it’s too harsh,’ she says, looking over the photographer’s head to the flashing stream of pictures popping up on the computer monitor. Then it’s back into the makeup chair.
From the six-odd hours I spend around Allen, I learn one thing very early on: she’s a perfectionist. She has her vision and if she doesn’t like something, she’ll say. She’s not afraid to keep people waiting to get something just right. It’s why her highly anticipated debut album, ‘Island 54’, has been three years in the making and how she landed a seven-figure record deal with Universal back in 2017. It’s why she remains one of the most touted British female artists today – and why her genre-hopping sound has earned her global recognition. Here, she tells Time Out what’s next.
Capital calling
‘I still feel like London’s my home, more than anywhere,’ says Allen, wearing a hairdresser’s gown in a stuffy meeting room in the Time Out office. These days, she lives in a mansion in Essex, about an hour and half away from central. ‘When people think they recognise me, they’re like: ‘‘surely Stefflon Don won’t be in Tesco up in the suburbs?’’,’ she says in a mock posh accent.
But pigeonhole her as a ‘British artist’ at your own peril. ‘There’s so many layers, so many influences,’ she says. ‘So if you say I’m just a British artist, I’m like…?’ She makes a face as if she’s smelt something bad. Her sound – flexing fierce bars and sweet, swirling vocals – hops between grime and amapiano house, dancehall, smooth RnB and commercial pop, skipping from Jamaican patois to Yoruba to London slang. In other words: it’s truly worldly, and she attributes much of it to her cross-cultural upbringing.
She was born into a Jamaican family in Birmingham, before moving to Holland for a decade and becoming fluent in Dutch, all while listening to artists like Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, Missy Elliott and Destiny’s Child. When she was 14, she returned to the UK with her six siblings, moving around Hackney, from Stoke Newington to Dalston (‘I had to walk through Ridley Road market to go to school: that stunk, so bad’), before settling in Clapton. ‘I drove through there the other day,’ she says. ‘It was crazy, because I used to drive through in my Polo, then I was driving in a Rolls Royce. Sometimes, when I go through the hood, it gives me a weird feeling. I look around and I’m like, I could still be here: seven of us living out of three bedrooms. What if I never made the decisions I made? But I always knew I wasn’t going to stay there.’
There’s so many layers, so many influences – so if you say I’m just a British artist, I’m like…?
Now, at 32 years old, you could say she’s doing alright. Although she’s been writing songs since she was eight, things started to change in 2015, when she appeared on a remix of ‘Lock Arff’ by Smoke Boys before releasing her debut mixtape, ‘Real Ting’, a year later. It was streamed more than three million times in the first month of its release. By 2017, Stefflon Don had a load of deals on the table: and soon, 54 London was born, her own subsidiary of Universal Music. That same year, she took home the award for Best Female at the MOBO Awards. Since then, she’s collabed with everyone from French Montana for her globally successful single ‘Hurtin Me’, to Wiley, Sean Paul and Idris Elba for the 2019 hit ‘Boasty’.
In some ways, it’s impressive that there’s been all of that and she still hasn’t released a debut album. But good things are normally worth waiting for.
The waiting game
‘You got me fucked up… mmmmm...’
All stops the interview to play new music from her phone. It’s a dreamy, tropical, amapiano-esque house track – a notable departure from the heavy, bouncing beats and the aggressive bars spat in her most recent release, ‘Habibi’, which came out this month with Turkish artist BLOK3. Slow guitars overlap with a tinkly melody and whirring, rhythmic percussion, conjuring up images of beaches, rum punch and sun-kissed skin. ‘East side, east side….’ she sings along to her own vocals. ‘They put on a beat and then I was literally just freestyling – there was not a lot to it,’ she says, explaining that the track, ‘You Got Me Fucked Up’, was recorded only three weeks ago. ‘It’s like, you can party to a heartbreak. When someone really got you fucked up, you put this on and you let it out.’
It’s the most I’ll hear from the album before it’s out – though we still don’t know when that will be, precisely. The record, which Allen initially announced would be released in 2022, has been pushed back several times. ‘I’ve now, last minute, taken out songs, added songs – I’m fucking crazy, but I’ve done it,’ Steff says, throwing her arms up. ‘Someone reminded me that I’ve been working on it for three years. I was like, no. That’s embarrassing. They [management] said to me: “Steff, we’re not giving no dates anymore until you hand in this fucking album”. So I’m handling it in this week. We’re looking at the first week of June.’
Do you think that song is a 10? If not, it shouldn’t make the album
A week later, her management still have no updates on a final release date, beyond the fact it will be coming ‘soon’. You’d think it would be a relief to wave goodbye to such a gargantuan project, but for Allen, it’s become something of a source of frustration. ‘This is my first time experiencing anxiety,’ she says. ‘It comes from overthinking. I’m just questioning stuff now, whereas, normally, I’m a very assertive person. In February something just switched: I was like, I don’t think all the songs are ready. But last year, I was happy, it was ready.’
Allen says she put out singles in the past which she wasn’t ‘100 percent’ happy with, as a result of pressures from previous management. It has heightened her perfectionist qualities even more – and made her swear not to fill her album with tracks she’s unsure about. ‘Do you think that song is a 10?’ she says. ‘If not, it shouldn’t make the album. Even though I have a team, they can’t make certain decisions for me. They want me to listen to a mix when I’m on my way home in the car and I’m just not in the artistic space. They don’t get that. They’re just like: Steff, deadlines!’
So, what might it look like, when the album does get the final sign off? Titled ‘Island 54’, referencing the 54 countries that make up the Caribbean islands and Africa, the record is a nod to Allen’s heritage, sonically leaning towards Afrobeats, dancehall and amapiano. ‘That type of stuff doesn’t die because it’s not trend heavy,’ Allen says. ‘Look at Lauryn Hill’s album [The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill], 25 years later. That’s a classic album. No matter when she was going to drop it, it was always going to work. That’s how I want people to feel about my music.’ Island 54 also features ‘very selective’ collabs (‘they killed their verses, they definitely add to the song’), and on two tracks, a choir. ‘There’s stuff on there that you expect, because I’m gonna be me,’ Allen says. ‘But there’s also stuff that makes you say: Steff has evolved.’
Centre stage
Dressed in a bright pink Carnival-style fit and broadcast live on the BBC to tens of millions, Stefflon Don took over the Pyramid stage on the Sunday of Glastonbury last year, earning rave reviews: Rolling Stone UK described the performance as ‘a complete triumph’.
‘I didn’t like Glastonbury, I hated it,’ she says, her face falling when I bring it up. ‘Terrible. I really wanted a band. I also wanted the dancers but the budget wouldn’t cover both. Glastonbury ain’t touching it. Hopefully, I can come back off the album and really put on a show that I am proud to show people.’
That means drilling routines in the rehearsal studio, nailing dance moves and putting in the hours to reach ‘Beyoncé’ levels of energy. A tighter-than-tight backing band is also – of course – part of the plan. ‘I just need it to be epic,’ Allen says. ‘There’s some live performances I didn’t take too seriously because I was so busy. But, if someone is paying their money to come see me, what do I want them to experience? I want them to want to see Steff again and again and again and again.’
Bar a headline gig at the Roundhouse’s Limitless Live last month, and five shows in Australasia earlier this year, Allen has been cooped up in the studio, grafting to finish the album. But you can tell by the way she talks about performing live that she’s itching to get out there. ‘You’re not an artist until you hit the stage,’ she says. ‘That’s what solidifies all your work. When you’re not on the road for a period of time, you start to feel a bit like, does anybody know me? And then you’re like, oh yeah. I’m Stefflon Don.’
Levelling up
This morning, Allen’s publicist had to run to Pak’s – north London’s Aladdin’s cave of African and Afro-Caribbean beauty products – to collect metres and metres of hair. It’s all been plaited into a long, Rapunzel-esque plait, laid out on the floor in a shape imitating Allen’s outline. When she leaves to change into her next look, her team holds the mass of hair in a line behind her: she films the whole thing, flash on, with her phone.
When Stefflon Don came into the spotlight back in the late 2010s, she was one of a small handful of female rappers making moves in the charts. These days, things are different: just look at the likes of Sexyy Red, Megan Thee Stallion, Coi Leray, Ice Spice and Doja Cat. The game has changed – but according to Steff, not necessarily for the best. ‘Anyone is an artist now,’ she says. ‘Random people trying to do music have ruined it for all of us, because they’re just here filling up the space, trying to get a hit. They might have one good song and that was it. Nowadays, the kids blow up stuff that – when I was coming up – would never be big. Those bars could not make it. They’re just rapping about anything. Like, I’m gonna rap about this – ’
She makes a face, mouthing the words ‘my coochie’.
‘– it’s like, girl, what are you talking about? You fall into the trap where you feel like, okay, no one’s really pushing their pen.’
According to Allen, the bar for bars has dropped. For a while, it put her off wanting to write rap music all together – and it’s also part of the reason why she has long-term plans to move to Miami. ‘There’s amazing producers and artists I’ve been working with out there and their drive is 10 times more than mine, sometimes,’ she says. ‘If you’re not around people who are going harder than you, you can become too comfortable. You need someone to drop a great song that makes you say: I need to go write something harder.
‘And I feel like the bar did drop for a while, which made me drop my bar as well, I’m gonna be honest. That’s why Kendrick goes away for so long: if there were rappers rapping like Kendrick all the time, he’d be consistently putting out new stuff, trying to prove himself. But look, now Drake has come at him. He’s like: it’s time.’
A learning curve
It’s been a year of lessons for Steff. Not only has she been trying to finish her album and juggling being a mother, daughter and sister, she’s also had to cope with a betrayal from someone who was, in her words, ‘a close personal friend’.
‘This has been the toughest time in my life,’ she says, swapping her signature swagger for a tone which feels more reflective and stoic. ‘It’s definitely taught me that – wow – no matter how nice someone seems, you never know.’
You need someone to drop a great song that makes you say: I need to write something harder
If anything, the situation has made her high standards even higher. ‘I’m so judgmental of everything: of myself and everyone,’ she says. ‘If I don’t do a good job, I will criticise myself, before you can. I’ve treated ‘Island 54’ like my first and last album, even though it’s not going to be. I’ve said in my head: okay, imagine this is the final product you can give the world? Would you be totally happy with that?’
If you only know Stefflon Don from her music, then the real-life person is warmer and sweeter than you might expect. She is, however, a ruthlessly hard worker. ‘I can’t control how everyone takes my album, but I can control how hard I work on it,’ she says. ‘I feel like, if I get that right – because I’m such a harsh critique – then 99 percent of the world will love it too. I can only do what I can do to the best of my ability. Now I’m coming to the final line, I’m happy, because I gave it everything, you know?!’
Photographer: Jess Hand @jesshandphotography
Design Director: Bryan Mayes @bryanmayesdotcom
Senior Designer: Jamie Inglis @818fpv
Photo Editor: Laura Gallant @lauramgallant
Video: Mashana Malowa
Stylist: Sachin Gogna @snxtchin
Stylist assistant: Radha Rani @radha.raniii
Hair: Shamara Roper @shamara_roper
Make-Up: David Gillers @jnx_mua
Location: Fitzrovia Chapel @fitzroviachapel
In look one, Stefflon Don wears @rickowensonline skirt, @christopher_esber top, @frances___o bra, necklace and headscarf, @rokeratelier heels and @truedecadenceuk earrings in look one.
In look two she wears @area corset, @entire_studios skirt, @richardquinn coat, @alexisbittar necklace, @moschino earrings and @stephenjonesmillinery cap.