In a studio just off Goodge Street in central London, dressed in a crop-top, leggings, and fluffy white sliders, the 25-year-old rapper Stephanie Allen, who goes by the name Stefflon Don (pronounced “Steff-lun”), is eating strawberry cake with long, pointed electric blue nails. I ask how she came up with one of the catchiest hooks of 2016 – on Chicago R&B artist Jeremih’s track, London. “We just made the beat on the spot,” she says. “I was like, ‘You haffi marry the na na / Before mi ride the banana…’ Yeah, that works!” And it did. The track was huge on the radio and in clubs last winter, and the funny faux conservatism of Allen’s line marked her out as much more than a mere guest artist.
She’s had a striking run as a guest artist nonetheless. After first surfacing in 2015 with a cover of Wretch 32’s Six Words, which took the tender ballad and flipped it on its head, she featured on tracks by Lethal Bizzle (Wobble remix), Sneakbo (Work remix) and Angel (Hop On). Coming full circle, she featured on Wretch’s top five album, Growing Over Life last September, then rounded off 2016 by dropping her debut mixtape Real Ting, being named on the BBC’S Sound of 2017 longlist, and lining up as the single most exciting female MC in the UK rap (as distinct from grime) scene.
Touted, somewhat lazily, as the UK’s answer to Nicki Minaj (“well, at least they’re not comparing me to anyone shit!”), she raps with wit and ferocity about female empowerment, street life and sex, her brash, charismatic music marked by authentic injections of Jamaican dancehall.
I ask about the unabashed approach to sex in her lyrics (there’s a lot to make middle England blush), and she shrugs: “It’s part of my culture. I grew up on Jamaican music in my house, and it’s raw about sex. I’m not going to compromise or not say what I want for anyone. Anyway, my Britishness waters my music down!”
Born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents, Allen spent her formative years in the Netherlands before returning to the UK at 14 when she settled in Clapton, east London. It was the dance music of the surrounding immigrant communities of Rotterdam – “Portuguese, Suriname and Spanish” – that tuned her ear, and their sounds can be detected in the way her music differs from conventional Jamaican rhythms.
Her voice in conversation is as it sounds on the songs – falling in and out of tough London edges and soft drawling patois. “I didn’t really know a lot of UK music apart from So Solid Crew and Dizzee,” she says. “I heard a lot of Spanish music and even Turkish music that had a slight influence of dancehall and reggae. It was a bit more uptempo than I was used to, so every time I hear Turkish music it takes me back to my childhood.”
She grew up in a musical family, with a mother who sang in choirs, and a rapper brother known as “Dutch”. Drawn as a child to singers like Usher and Whitney Houston, she would perform Destiny’s Child songs at school productions, and was “anti-rap”. But by her late teens she’d fallen for Foxy, Missy Elliot and Lil’ Kim. “I liked the songs where they were just being bad and getting at a guy and getting what they wanted!” she laughs. “I used to love Ladies Night by Lil’ Kim so much that I performed it in school, without really knowing what it was about. I just knew that she was getting at a guy and winning.”
Her brilliant single Real Ting riffs on this between thunderous bass claps as she celebrates her “belly fat” and “being bad”, boasting about diamonds in her Rolex and men coming over “just to do the dishes”.
A few days before we meet, Allen posts on Instagram a picture of herself, framed by inky blue hair, signing a record contract. The caption reads: “Signed my label to Universal then I signed myself”, referring to the fact that Universal created a subsidiary label, 54 London, just for her. “It gives me artistic control,” she says. “Well, actually, I only just signed yesterday, so maybe they’ll tie me up and tell me what to do!”
It seems unlikely. Allen’s an hour late for the interview and is clear about her terms – she doesn’t want to talk about her young son, or the violent lyrics on tracks such as 16 Shots (“If you hit up the Da-Da-Da-Don / Bullets gon’ hit you wherever you are”). She coyly reveals, when I press her about online rumours, that she’s been recording with Drake – “Yeah, we’ve… done some work. We’ve recorded together” – and discusses directing her own stage shows and music videos.
You get the sense that she’s used to getting what she wants and is set on nothing less than astronomical stardom.
“Stefflon Don songs go off in the club… well, basically, anywhere people hear them,” she giggles. “And imagine – I haven’t even put out the album yet!”
- Stefflon Don plays at Tape, London on 6 April; the Great Escape festival, Brighton, 18-20 May; and Common People festival, Southampton, 27-28 May
