In November 2022, one year into an 11-year prison sentence for firearm charges, Birmingham rapper Marnz Malone was hanging out with his friends during “sosh”, or association time, on his wing. One of them, a boxer, was preaching the benefits of fitness training, explaining how he’d improvised an exercise using some equipment he had. Malone noticed the man living in the cell next to him showing a keen interest and asking questions. At the time, he thought little of it.

“We didn’t know that he’d just shown the man how to kill himself,” Malone says on a Skype call. “It traumatised so many of us.”

This incident inspired the 25-year-old’s latest single, I Hate January, out this week. The music video follows the perspectives of two young men experiencing mental health crises in their cells, leading one to take his own life. Text at the start of the video explains that 88 suicides were recorded in the UK prison system in the last year, an average of one every four days.

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