Labi Siffre

British vocalist, musician, and artist.

Born: 25 June 1945 in Hammersmith, London, England, UK.

Brought up in London, Siffre is the son of an English mother and Nigerian father. After jobs such as mini-cab driver and delivery man he started to concentrate on music full-time leaving for Cannes, France to play guitar with a variety of soul musicians and bands. He returned to the UK in the late 1960s and enjoyed solo hits in 1971 with "It Must Be Love" (later covered by [a=Madness]) and "Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying".

Although "Watch Me" (1972) was his last hit of the 1970s, he made a spectacular comeback with "(Something Inside) So Strong" (1987).

In recent years Siffre's work has been reassessed by a new generation after the break from his song "I Got The" from album "[m=171737]" (1975) (and featuring [a=Chas And Dave] as session musicians!) was sampled by [a=Eminem] in his breakthrough hit "[m=12114]" (1999).

Siffre nowadays spends much of his time writing poetry which deals with gay rights and other world issues.