Stefflon Don: ‘When a door was slammed in my face, I kicked down another one’

It is late afternoon on a rainy day in east London and Stefflon Don is treating staff and volunteers at Felix’s Kitchen to an impromptu performance of ‘Dip’. Her hairnet, apron and safety gloves ensemble can’t match the high glamour of the skintight cheetah print vinyl she wore on stage at the Mobos, or even the soft — as she describes it — ‘elegante’ glamour of her ES shoot. However, when she breaks into full choreography her electric presence burns at full wattage, making the chilly kitchen feel like her headline turn at last summer’s Wireless Festival.

Despite a year that has included collaborations with Doja Cat and Little Mix, the launch of new single ‘Beg Mi Ah Link’ and topping 6 billion streams, she’s mucking in, prepping four catering troughs worth of surplus vegetables rescued from supermarkets, restaurants and farms by food surplus charity The Felix Project, as her playlist blasts out of the speakers. Tomorrow, 12 full-time staff members, plus two teams of 20 volunteers, under the direction of head chef Leon Aarts, will cook, pack and deliver more than 3,000 meals to underprivileged households in Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Newham.

Before heading to the kitchen — set up with the £11m raised by the Evening Standard’s Food for London Now campaign, which will serve the one in three Londoners reportedly considering using food banks this Christmas — to be put to work, Steff tours the warehouses: vast refrigerated rooms packed with pallets of fruit and veg, shelves lined with pasta sauces, cereals and rice. Every day, truckloads of food are delivered to be unpacked and sorted by volunteers.

‘It just goes to show that people don’t have to go hungry,’ she says, shaking her head in disbelief at the sheer volume of food stored here, a small fraction of the 6.3 million tonnes of edible produce that is wasted annually in this country — enough to make 15 billion meals and feed the entire population three times a day for 11 weeks. ‘A roof over your head, food in the fridge, these things should be standard,’ she adds.

‘It’s sad because we shouldn’t really need charities, especially with all the taxes we pay,’ she continues. ‘Where is [the Government] putting all our tax money? It is sad that it’s left to us: no matter how much you help, there’s only so much you can do, you’re never going to fix that on your own.’

Born Stephanie Allen, the 30-year-old is the middle child of seven. Problems with her father’s immigration status forced her Jamaican parents to move from Birmingham to Rotterdam when she was five. Steff’s earliest memory is of the family living in a small one-bedroom apartment, in a new city where they did not speak the language.

‘When you move anywhere at that age, you adapt,’ she says. ‘And Holland is just like England: it’s very multicultural. That made me grow up with a very open mind.’ When she was 14, her parents split up. Her dad returned to Jamaica, two of her older brothers remained in Holland. The rest of the family headed for the UK, where Steff’s mother felt she had more of a support system in place, and settled in Hackney. It was a culture shock. ‘I feel like the first two months, I struggled hard in school,’ she says. ‘My accent was weird, I didn’t look like the 14-year-olds here, they were way more grown than I was used to. I had to get with the programme because if I didn’t, I’d have been left in a corner.’

Money was tight, and Steff grew up watching her mum work all hours to provide for children. ‘I’d see her working all the time, but sometimes we had money and sometimes we literally didn’t,’ she says, acknowledging the working people still facing food poverty this Christmas. ‘People work hard, but they have bills to pay. Their children have needs. And I know the companies that they work for have enough money to pay them more because

I see what I get paid for stuff. There’s a lot of money around but they only give it to certain people. Essential workers, doctors, teachers, these people are vital and I feel like their work should be reflected in their payslip.’ To fill the breach, The Felix Project has pledged to supply much-needed fresh and nutritious school meals for disadvantaged children in Newham and Tower Hamlets throughout winter.

These days, Steff is wealthy and successful enough to provide not only for herself, but for her extended family. It wasn’t an easy road. From a young age, she aspired to make music. Recently her mum unearthed her very first demo, a track she recorded in Holland when she was just nine. ‘And the song is actually sick still, which is crazy.’

By the time she finished her GCSEs, she had ‘fixed up her swag’, found a group of friends, learnt to navigate the huge school buildings and fallen in love with her first boyfriend. She went on to college to study performing arts, a future in music at the forefront of her mind — ‘and then next thing you know, I had a baby.’

Pregnancy was definitely not in the grand plan — ‘never the plan to have a baby at 17!’ — and as a college student, she knew she would need help to raise a child. An uncomfortable meeting between her concerned mother and the baby’s young but supportive father had to take place. ‘It was so awkward!’ she cringes. ‘I literally slept in my mum’s bed until I was 15, because we were so close. So for my mum to see me pregnant, and be sitting there talking to my boyfriend… That was actually the worst part for me. It was so embarrassing that my mum knew I’d had sex.’ She also attended a group for teenage mothers, where girls who were expecting could find community and advice from other girls in the same position. ‘That helped a lot,’ she says. ‘I felt like I had a lot of support.’

After her son Jaylen was born, Steff went back to college for another year and enrolled in a series of short courses, grafting as a hairdresser and decorating cakes to cover her expenses and pay for studio time. She was as determined as ever to carve out a career as a rapper. ‘I’ve never gone through life thinking I’m not going to make it,’ she says. ‘I breastfed my son for the first year of his life, so he was always with me. When I went to college, he would be downstairs in the crèche. My mum was so supportive. I was never worried.’

It was in 2015, at 22 years old, that she broke on to the scene, making a name for herself with covers of Wretch 32’s ‘6 Words’ and Section Boyz’ ‘Lock Arff’. Within a year, she was signed to Universal Music on her own imprint, 54 London, and kicked off 2017 on a BBC Sound Of list along with Jorja Smith and AJ Tracey. Her first major label release, ‘Hurtin’ Me’, sailed straight into the Top 10 that summer and three months later, she picked up the Mobo award for Best Female, followed quickly by a Brits Rising Star nod and becoming the first-ever UK rapper in XXL magazine’s Freshman Class list. It was a gilded beginning.