I Hate January - Marnz Malone (2025)

I interviewed one of UK rap's most important new voices, whose heartfelt new single and video aims to raise public awareness about suicides in prison. Please read with care 🙏🏽❤️

Over recent years, Marnz Malone - who was sentenced to 11 years on firearms charges in 2021 - has spent much of his time sat in a silent prison cell reading books and penning poetic lines about life, love and death.

Then he raps them down the phone to a trusted circle of engineers who lay them over stripped-back, melancholic beats for the outside world to take in.

In doing so, against the odds, the Jamaican-born, Birmingham rapper has become one of the most unique and respected voices in UK rap, amassing tens of millions of streams and a growing fanbase that includes heavyweights Nines, Potter Payper and Central Cee. His 2024 project Tina's Boy reached number 66 in the Official Charts.

Like the crackle of an old vinyl, sharpened by the poetic potency of his storytelling, his words have an analog rawness that makes them difficult to ignore.

I’ve found that I can stick his music on and just let it run for hours in the background when I’m cooking, driving or being introspective. It is deep and intense, but meditative and cathartic, like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

Malone's new single I Hate January aims to raise public awareness about the tragic epidemic of self-inflicted deaths in custody. He was inspired to write it after his neighbour took his own life. It will feature on his forthcoming project Sabr (which means patience or perseverance in Arabic).

I spoke to him for the Guardian over the phone about his love of reading and writing, his perspective on suicides in prison and what might be done to alleviate the mental health of those caught in the strained criminal justice system. If you read this interview, please do so with care as it covers heavy themes 🙏🏽❤️

This feels like a continuation of my piece about Lady Unchained’s Free Flow show on National Prison Radio. It is quite something that the UK prison phone line has become one of the main technologies enabling the creation of new wave British rap’s most conscious grassroots expression.

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