Here’s the Story Behind Central Cee’s Iced-Out Queen Elizabeth II Chain

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.

Central Cee at the 2024 Wimbledon tournament.

Karwai Tang/Getty Images

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.

GQ: I would love to hear more about the inspiration behind the Queen Elizabeth chain, and how the idea came to be.

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.

Courtesy of A Jewellers

Courtesy of A Jewellers

Was it an idea that he came to you with?

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.