Claudius Afolabi Siffre (born 25 June 1945), better known as Labi Siffre (pronounced "Labby SIF-ree"), is a British singer, songwriter and poet. Siffre released six albums between 1970 and 1975, and four between 1988 and 1998. His best known compositions include "It Must Be Love" which reached number 14 on the UK Singles Chart in 1971 (a song later covered by the ska band Madness), "Crying Laughing Loving Lying", and "(Something Inside) So Strong"—an anti-apartheid song inspired by a television documentary in which white soldiers in South Africa were filmed shooting at black civilians in the street—which hit number 4 on the UK chart. The latter song won Siffre the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, and it has been used in Amnesty International campaigns. His music has been sampled extensively by US rappers such as Eminem, and Jay-Z. Siffre has published essays, the stage and television play Deathwrite and three volumes of poetry: Nigger, Blood on the Page, and Monument. In 2022, his life and work was explored in the BBC series Imagine, under the title, Labi Siffre: This Is My Song. Early life and education Claudius Afolabi Siffre was born as the fourth of five children at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in Hammersmith, London to a British mother of mixed Barbadian and Belgian descent and a Nigerian father. Siffre was brought up in Bayswater and Hampstead and educated at a Catholic independent day school, St Benedict's School, in Ealing, West London. Despite his Catholic education, Siffre has stated that he has always been an atheist. He studied music at the Eric Gilder School of Music in Wardour Street, Soho. Gilder is remembered with gratitude in his poem "education education education". After leaving school, Siffre worked as a taxi driver and a deliveryman before deciding to concentrate on music. He moved to Cannes, France, where he played guitar with various soul musicians and bands, but returned to the UK in the late 1960s. Musical career Siffre played jazz guitar at Annie Ross's jazz club in Soho, London in the 1960s as part of a Hammond organ, guitar, drums house band. He released six albums between 1970 and 1975. In the early 1970s, three of his singles became hits: "It Must Be Love" (No. 14, 1971, and performed the song on the BBC’s Top of the Pops)