Rapper Che Lingo opens up about anxiety and eating disorder in new album Coming Up For Air
* Warning – this article contains an account of disordered eating
“I’m super exhaustingly deep,” says Che Lingo, smiling. “But I’m learning to know when to just go with it.” The south London rapper has been talking for almost an hour and could probably keep going for a while. This is a man who has a lot to get off his chest.
Having risen to prominence with the release of debut album The Worst Generation through Idris Elba‘s record label in 2020, his lyrics dealt with themes of anxiety and loss, masculinity, the treatment of black people in society, and the impact growing up on one of the capital’s deprived estates has had on his life.
My Block, a song written about his friend Julian Cole, who was left paralysed and brain damaged at 19 after being arrested following a “scuffle” with officers and door staff outside a nightclub in 2013, became part of the soundtrack to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Now, he is back with Coming Up For Air, which is just as personal, exploring a period during the pandemic in which he battled grief, injury and bulimia. It is rare for a man in the public eye to discuss a problem like this, even more so in the world of rap. He says he understands it is a subject that could draw “ridicule and criticism – even hate”, but it’s an issue he wants to be open about.
Lingo, who keeps his real name private, tells Sky News his looks and weight have always been a subject of inner turmoil; at school, he was bullied for being chubby so as a teenager he threw himself into boxing and working out, becoming “super disciplined” to change the reflection he hated in the mirror.
Stuck indoors when the pandemic hit, he put on weight. And then, playing basketball one day after lockdown lifted, he ruptured his Achilles tendon and was left wearing an orthopaedic boot for six months.
“I was far from obese but a lot bigger than I wanted and I was very uncomfortable in my skin,” he says. “It affected me badly… I didn’t know if was going to be able to use my leg in the same way again, ever, because it’s such a volatile injury. Everywhere I went I was sweating because the boot was so heavy. It was really mentally exhausting as well as physically exhausting.
‘I won’t ever shy away from talking about it’
“I was eating and eating and eating. I was eating and feeling super guilty. That’s the process: you eat, you feel guilty, then you purge, and feel guilty for purging. [I was] hurting my insides. It can kill you if you abuse it too much. I knew it was a problem when I realised nobody could stop me from doing it when I felt the urge.”
Eventually, Lingo told some family members and close friends. “And I put it on the album,” he says, smiling. “From then it was like, okay, this feels better now. And I won’t ever shy away from talking about things in real life that I’ve put on my projects.”
According to eating disorder charities, about 25% of those who suffer are male. Lingo hopes he can help others, particularly men who might be suffering in silence.
“You still struggle with it, every now and again,” he says. “Certain things never go away. At the same time you learn how to manage… it’s something I’m now more prepared to deal with. In the same way, I want the album to make people feel like, yeah, you will sink again at some point, but you might be more prepared to deal with it after you listen to me talk about it.”
The call from Idris Elba
Idris Elba on stage at Glastonbury in 2015. Pic: Guy Bell/Shutterstock
Lingo was raised by his grandmother on his mother’s side. Having written songs since primary school – “I always knew I was good, from the reactions I’d get in the playground” – he started performing in youth clubs as a teenager, graduating to talent shows, building a fanbase online. “I just wanted to be heard,” he says. “I found something I felt was valuable and I wanted to share it with people.”
Getting signed by Elba, who founded the 7Wallace label, was a huge moment. “I was never really one to be starstruck,” he says. “I’ve got family in the early So Solid [Crew] era, so I was always around them.” But he admired Elba’s talent and work ethic, and being able to earn a living through his music – and help support his family – was empowering.
“It’s also a massive responsibility. You almost feel obligated to continue to seek stimulation and live life and figure out ways to say things that are important. If you’re that type of artist, which I believe I am. But yeah, it was a big moment.”
Rather than offer advice, Elba told Lingo to keep doing exactly what he was doing. His son was a fan, he told the rapper, and he had been listening himself for months. “Before we got working on the first album, we had a phone call and he was like, ‘I think you’re a genius, I think what you do is amazing, and I’m just happy you’ve trusted us with the next leg of your career’.”
Releasing The Worst Generation felt almost trivial, he says, as people were dying during the pandemic. But he realised many related to his lyrics, that this wasn’t just his story. The album is a telling of his environment, “growing up as a young black youth in south London and how that affected me; not going down the route of being a product of said environment, which is the majority of people”.
He is tired of stereotypes. The majority of black people living on estates such as the one he grew up on aren’t involved in crime, or “things based on survival that people would consider negative”, he says. “Most are regular people wanting to get on with their day. I wanted to make sure that not only did I get to tell my story, but I got to tell the story of millions and millions of young black youths that come out of south and southwest London”.
‘He was 19, a semi-pro footballer, a sports science student’
Julian Cole. Pic: Cole family
Taking down police brutality in My Block allowed Lingo to vent his anger about what happened to his friend Julian, whose broken neck was only discovered after he had been taken to a police station, rather than a hospital.
Three police officers falsely claimed he had been able to walk to the police van – but CCTV and witnesses proved otherwise. The officers were not accused of causing the injuries, police said, but were later found guilty of gross misconduct and sacked. Following the hearing in 2018, Bedfordshire Police said the officers were in no way to blame for Mr Cole’s “catastrophic” injuries but apologised for their conduct following the incident, saying honesty and integrity were “vital” in policing.
“He was 19, a semi-pro footballer, a sports science student,” Lingo says now. “By the time he reached the police station, his neck was broken and he was paralysed. And three policemen lied about their involvement. Why is nobody in jail? Why is nobody being convicted? Why is the government not paying compensation for his potential, the stress that’s come to his family, and the fact his life will be changed forever?”
The song became part of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. While it was written before the death of George Floyd, the rapper says he realised what it meant to people at that time. “There’s a lot of focus on my community and the people that come from it and I felt it was important to try and be a voice for that, or at least get my frustrations off about what I was observing.”
‘I’m still unpacking lots of issues’
Lingo is intensely passionate and deeply thoughtful, slipping into rapping lyrics several times to illustrate a point (sometimes so fluently it’s not always obvious), and fastidiously explaining the meaning behind his songs. He sees his music as therapy. “People don’t really get an opportunity to process what happens in their environment as much as maybe an artist might do. Because you have to sit down and write songs about the things that happen to you, whereas other people might have to pay to talk about them.”
However, he admits he struggles with some of the side-effects of success. “I’m still unpacking all the reasons why I need this attention. I’m still unpacking how I felt like I got lost and then I found myself. I’m still unpacking the idea of when the bulimia decided to rear its head. I’m still unpacking, like, why I feel I need to be at the forefront of this kind of cycle of media and attention and all of the toxic parts of it?”
Ultimately, he says he can’t not do it. In Heart Race, he raps about anxiety, and caring too much. “‘How do we start addressing the trauma the world taught us/ whilst maintaining this sh*t that we need to bring to the table?’ Because it’s all happening at one time. You’ve seen the wars and you’ve done what you can, everybody scrambles to support what they can when they can, and that’s a beautiful thing. But what’s going on in your life as well? What wars are you fighting by yourself?”
Lingo has received several messages from fans, he says, telling him his music has helped them. “I’ve read these things deeply and respectfully… [they’re saying] ‘I felt suicidal at this point of my life and this song really brought me out of that’. Or, ‘this song helped me finish my dissertation and I’ve put you in the credits’. That’s one of the most positive effects you can have on somebody, you’ve made them want to keep living. I’m forever grateful to them for being that vulnerable with me.”
‘Che Lingo-ing’ Freddie Mercury and Queen
Lingo with Queen’s Roger Taylor (front), along with producer Manon Dave and musicians Oliver Hutch and Josh Hawkins outside Abbey Road Studios
The final song on Coming Up For Air is My Radio, a track which samples Freddie Mercury‘s vocals from Queen‘s Radio Gaga. Lingo was picked by drummer Roger Taylor to reinterpret the band’s classic hit and he transformed the track into a song about his grandmother on his father’s side, who died towards the start of the pandemic.
“I was like, I don’t want it to sound anything like the original track. I want to ‘Che Lingo’ this song,” he says. “I started overthinking it, but then was like, this isn’t why they picked me. They picked me to do what I do, and I did that. My grandma would’ve loved it.”
Che Lingo’s Coming Up For Air is out now
As over one million students receive their GCSE results, Sky News has found gender and factors linked to deprivation remain troubling predictors of students’ performance.
Overall GCSE grades are relatively consistent with last year’s results, indicating stability has returned following the end of pandemic grading.
The compulsory courses, Level 2 English and Mathematics, continue to be a hurdle for many GCSE students – with Thursday’s results showing the highest failure rates for the two subjects in a decade.
Yet, while overall grades are stable, so too are key attainment gaps that experts say point to deprivation.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson denounced attainment gaps for white working-class children in an article for The Telegraph.
“It’s appalling, and I won’t stand by and watch those numbers continue to grow,” Ms Phillipson wrote. “It’s not just the life chances of those children that are being damaged – it’s also the health of our society as a whole.”
While the data does not share deprivation status or ethnicity of students, other strongly correlated factors such as English region and school type show stark inequalities.
Some 48.1% of GCSE exams sat at fee-paying schools in England received grades of 7 or above, compared with 18.2% at non-selective state schools.
Fiona Spellman, CEO of education charity SHINE, said, “The primary difference that drives the attainment gap between those who attend independent schools and those who don’t really comes from the circumstances in those children’s lives.”
Regional inequalities across England also remain significant. In London, 28.4% of GCSE exams were awarded a grade 7 or higher compared with just 17.8% of exams in the North East of England.
But even students in London were outperformed by Northern Ireland, where 31.6% of GCSE students received a 7 or above.
“Deprivation is a major driver of the gap we see between the different regions and in terms of the attainment children achieve in all phases of education,” said Ms Spellman.
This year’s cohort had both a disrupted primary and secondary school experience due to the pandemic – a factor that may be influencing some of these inequality gaps.
“We know that the pandemic affected all children, but we know that it didn’t affect all children equally,” added Ms Spellman. “The legacy of COVID is still very much still alive today and how that had a disproportionate effect on the children who most need support is still working its way through.”
Gender gap stubbornly persistent
One of the clearest divides in the results – and not mentioned by the education secretary – is gaps based on gender.
Girls continue to receive a greater proportion of the top grades compared with boys. Among students receiving a 7/A or above, 55.8% were girls while 44.2% were boys.
In England, the gap is wider when looking just at 16-year-old students taking 7 or more GCSEs. 60.7% of those in this cohort receiving top grades were girls while 39.3% were boys.
But, Jill Duffy, the chair of one of the main qualifications body, the OCR, pointed out the overall gender gap this year is the narrowest since 2000.
However, Claire Thomson and Cath Jadhav, both board members of the Joint Council for Qualifications alongside Ms Duffy, cautioned that the decrease in the gender gap was too small to confirm any concrete trend.
“The change is relatively small, at fractions of percentage points, so there will be lots of individual factors which affect that,” said Ms Jadhav.
Certain subjects showed large gender imbalances between boys and girls.
Girls were the most overrepresented in home economics, followed by performing/expressive arts, health & social care, hospitality, and social science subjects.
In contrast, boys were disproportionately more likely to take other technology, construction, engineering, computing, and economics.
Working-class boys facing hurdles
So, is Ms Phillipson right to highlight white working-class children as falling behind? And should we be more concerned about white working-class boys in particular?
While the data does not include sufficient detail on how these inequalities stack on each other, data published by the Department for Education (DfE) based on last year’s results suggest white working-class boys are among the most disadvantaged in education.
Among all children eligible for free school meals, White British boys were much less likely to receive a grade of 4 – a pass – or above on their GCSEs.
Black Caribbean and mixed white/black Caribbean boys on free school meals had similarly poor pass rates.
“It’s not all boys. And it’s not all white working-class boys,” said David Spendlove, professor at the University of Manchester’s Institute for Education. But, “boys top all of those key indicators: likely to be diagnosed with special needs, likely to be excluded from school.”
“The system is stacked against them and at every single hurdle they are going to face challenges which mount increasingly over time,” said Prof Spendlove.
Beyond A-levels
What’s next for students receiving results on Thursday?
According to DfE’s 2024 numbers, just over 40% of 16-year-olds started an A-level course the following year.
More than 20% started other Level 3 qualifications, such as T-levels or BTECs. Around 3.5% started apprenticeships.
However, 6.2% were classified as not in education, employment, or training (“NEET”).
Simon Ashworth, deputy CEO and head of policy for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said, “The number of young people who are not in education, employment or training has got worse, not better.”
“We’re nearly to a million young people who are NEET,” he said. “That is a worry.”
Boys between the ages of 16 and 18 are more likely than their female counterparts to have NEET status, DfE data reveals.
Furthermore, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds “tend to be the young people who will be closest to the job market or the risk of becoming NEET once they leave education,” shared Mr Ashworth.
Mr Ashworth also added that some young people who pursue apprenticeships fail to complete them because they struggle to pass mandatory Level 2 Mathematics.
Students who receive lower-than-desired results on Thursday, however, should stay optimistic that many doors remain open to them.
This year saw a 12.1% rise in students 17 or older resitting exams this year.
SHINE’s Dr Helen Rafferty said that the resit rate is likely due to the pandemic as “many students have come to the end of their secondary school journey having had the most chaotic and disrupted educational journey that you can imagine.”
Nonetheless, Ms Rafferty said, “I do think it’s encouraging that so many students are choosing to move on to an educational pathway which still provides them with that opportunity to get their English and maths results.”
UK
Lucy Connolly: Councillor’s wife jailed for inciting racial hatred on X after Southport murders released
A Northampton childminder who was jailed for inciting racial hatred after the Southport murders has been released from prison.
Lucy Connolly, the wife of Conservative councillor Raymond Connolly, was handed a 31-month sentence in October last year after she admitted publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on the X social media site.
In an apparent reference to asylum seekers staying in UK hotels, Connolly posted on the day of the murder of three girls in Southport on 29 July last year: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”
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Riots a year on: ‘It looked like a modern-day lynching’
The mother-of-three, who was working as a childminder at the time, had shared the post after false rumours circulated online that the Southport murderer was an asylum seeker. He was later named as UK-born teenager Axel Rudakubana.
Connolly’s post was viewed 310,000 times in three-and-a-half hours before she deleted it.
Her release means she has served nine months of a 31-month sentence.
Her sentence which was handed down at Birmingham Crown Court has been criticised as being too harsh and some argued she should not have been jailed as she was exercising freedom of speech.
Lucy Connolly. Pic: Facebook
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch challenged Lucy Connolly’s charges, saying that “protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety”.
“If the law does this, then the law itself is broken – and it’s time Parliament looked again at the Public Order Act,” she said in a post on X on Thursday.
The Tory leader said: “Lucy Connolly finally returns home to her family today. At last.
“Her punishment was harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting.
“At that time, after Southport, Keir Starmer branded all protesters ‘far-right’ and called for ‘fast-track prosecutions’.
“Days later, Lucy was charged with stirring up racial hatred – an offence that doesn’t even require intent to incite violence. Why exactly did the Attorney General think that was in the public interest?”
Rupert Lowe, who was an MP for Reform at the time, described her as a “political prisoner” in a Facebook post and said “jailing a young mother over a social media post is not fair play”.
Conservative West Northamptonshire councillor Raymond Connolly. Pic: PA
However, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer defended the sentencing earlier this year, addressing Connolly’s case in May after her Court of Appeal application against her jail term was dismissed.
Asked during Prime Minister’s Questions whether her imprisonment was an “efficient or fair use” of prison, Sir Keir said: “Sentencing is a matter for our courts, and I celebrate the fact that we have independent courts in this country.
“I am strongly in favour of free speech, we’ve had free speech in this country for a very long time and we protect it fiercely.
“But I am equally against incitement to violence against other people. I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.”
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Lord Young of Acton, founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said: “The fact that Lucy Connolly has spent more than a year in prison for a single tweet that she quickly deleted and apologised for is a national scandal, particularly when Labour MPs, councillors and anti-racism campaigners who’ve said and done much worse have avoided jail.
“The same latitude they enjoyed should have been granted to Lucy.”
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