The buzzy British rapper Central Cee, who is rarely seen wearing anything other than a tracksuit and a skintight Kalenji running beanie, has made it clear that he won’t be made to dress up for anyone or anything. “I ain’t puttin’ no suit and tie on, I turned down the Met Gala,” he razzed on his and fellow London MC Dave’s “Our 25th Birthday.” (Irish actor Barry Keoghan just so happened to play the track as his own Met pump-up song when I interviewed him back in May.) So when Cench pulled up in the VIP box at Wimbledon’s Centre Court last week, it was no surprise he’d be in his usual joggers and black skull cap, a rogue among the throng of tailored linen suits. But it was his truly bonkers new accessory—a huge, iced-out chain featuring the unmistakable side profile of the late Queen Elizabeth II—that caught everyone’s attention.
Central Cee had debuted the monarchical chain earlier this month at the F1 Grand Prix of Great Britain, but the choice to wear it at Wimbledon—Britain’s stodgiest sporting event—was an especially cheeky move; even the Daily Mail wrote it up the next day. (Funnily enough, Her Majesty didn’t particularly like tennis.) He’s since worn it on stage at London’s Wireless Festival, where Cench performed with New York rapper Ice Spice, whom he may or may not be dating.
The piece was the work of Cench’s longtime jeweler Abtin Abbasi, the go-to icemaker for Britain’s rising tide of crossover hip-hop and Afrobeats stars. The Lizzy pendant is actually double-sided: fully iced out on one side, simple rose gold on the other. (A cute video posted to Abbasi’s A Jewellers Instagram account shows the jeweler flipping a pound coin and asking the rapper, “So Cench, heads or tails?”) As a close friend of Central Cee’s older brothers, Abbasi has known the rapper for years, since “he was just a kid making a few songs and trying to break through,” the jeweler told me by phone from London this week. “It's been good to see each other come up and be both thriving in our own respects and our own businesses,” said Abbasi.
He made Cench’s first piece—a chain stamped with the rapper’s “Live Yours” motto—and was excited to collaborate with him on the Queen Elizabeth chain, which he knew would go viral as soon as they’d cooked up the idea. It was a nod to their country and their currency, the queen’s visage being as symbolic to Brits as Benjamin Franklin’s is to Americans.
We chatted about the making of the piece, how “understated” England is coming around to hip-hop culture, and whether or not he’ll ever be asked to make a King Charles chain.
Abtin Abassi: Well, the queen, [she] represents our country, the monarchy, royalty, history. It represents our currency. There's a lot of things behind it that just signify being English, being proud, being connected to the country and the history. The queen was the most important woman of our country. It just made sense to use the queen's head just to represent the UK, represent where we're from. And of course, like I said, she's the face of our currency.
We both thought of it, but it was more his idea of going with the queen's face. He was just talking about doing something to represent being English and from London. We went back and forth on a few ideas and that was one of the ideas that we thought really made the most sense. It was only right to have the queen's face [and to emphasize] how it's used in the currency, on the note, on the coin. And then [Central Cee’s] whole new thing is, “I want to do everything plain rose gold now.” So he was like, "I just want it plain rose gold." And I was like, “Okay, well it's going to be an amazing piece because we're going to do the queen's face, it's going to go absolutely nuts." But I just thought to myself, I wish we could do a diamond set, because we could do so much with a diamond layout and the different stones and shapes.
So our plan went a little bit like that, just a little bit disappointed, but then all of a sudden he's like, “Oh, I'm thinking to do it [all] bust down instead,” or “I'm thinking of doing one also in diamonds.” So I was like, “Even better, why don't we do it 3D? Do it like an actual sculpture, make it two-sided and do one plain side, one diamond side and you can just flip it around and wear it both ways?” And then we're like, “Wow, what an amazing idea.” It just makes perfect sense instead of having two pendants. It just makes the piece. The shape of it now is so amazing and it's not flat. It's 3D, it's domed. It made everything so perfect and it came together so great. And it's also unique and special, so I was really happy that that happened. And we managed to [make] a two-faced, coin-type medallion.
No, that's his new style. He wanted to go with everything plain rose gold. … [But] when we got to do the diamonds, there's so much intricacy and different stone layout and design. We used different shaped diamonds in different places, the crown, the hair part, everything. … I knew it would be a piece that would go viral just because of the fact that it was a great design, but also it has a lot of meaning. It's special and no one's thought to do something like this, and it represents him and his country so well.
We didn't talk about it so much, but I just knew the idea would go absolutely wild. I knew the whole country would support it as well, even the normal—I don't know—the demographic of people that just don't understand hip-hop culture and hip hop jewelry and big chains [who] look down on this kind of stuff. Even those kinds of people from our country would also just support and go crazy [for] it because it's the queen. They all love the queen. She's the woman of their country. It just breaks the whole part of the stigma and the negative thoughts about hip-hop chains and their big chains and their big jewelry.
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England is different to America as well. It's not really so flashy. Everyone's a bit more bougie and undercover and understated. So the fact that we've used the queen, I think everyone loves it. Everyone's talking about it. The Daily Mail picked it up when he was at Wimbledon wearing it. I think so many people have seen it. I'm sure even the royal family and people from the royals have seen him being like, “Wow, this is amazing.”
Exactly. It just made perfect sense. She's the woman that represents our country. It's our currency. It's everything to do with us in the UK. Plus, a lot of important things are happening in the world right now. We just got to the finals of the Euros, which was like, we haven't been in so many years. We didn't actually win [laughs], but we were close. It just was the perfect time. And God rest her soul, she just passed away not too long as well. The king has just literally taken over, even though now the new notes are going to have the king's head on them, the queen's head is what was there for however many [decades].
It's such a good way to just remember her and [for Central Cee] to be proud of the country that he's from and the country that he's representing. Because at the end of the day, he's coming from the UK and breaking out and making insane noise all around the world and becoming one of the biggest artists even in America, but coming from the UK and not forgetting where he comes from. So I feel like it was so special to him to be able to really be proud and be patriotic about his country and where he's from.
She's the symbol of our country at the end of the day. If you're going to think of the most symbolic thing to have to represent the UK and your country, it's going to be the queen. There's nothing else. There's no other way to represent it.
Yeah, but he's not as loved and it's not as special. He's just taken over because she's passed away. But the queen is just a completely different type of feel, a different type of love. And the main representation of our country is the queen.
The chain and pendant together, I'd say £300,000 to £400,000… It can easily be priced up more than that. That's quite modest, that price I gave. I know for a fact that if this was charged at a normal price, at what the leading competition that we have [would do], I'm sure it'd be a lot more expensive. Something like this, you could say it could be up to a million dollars.
We do, yeah. We've got now a big Syna—his brand—pendant coming. We've got a bunch of new rings that basically are the name of his new album. Plus we're doing a big belt buckle for him as well, actually a big Syna belt buckle. So that's going to be cool as well. … But we're breaking out more into the States now. We're just trying to now cross the waters and do things more in States.
This interview has been edited and condensed.