published on May 04, 2024 in gacor

Meet Medy Elito (aka Don EE): The footballer and rapper who went global thanks to Beyonce

This article is part of The Athletic’s series celebrating UK Black History Month. To view the whole collection, click here.

Medy Elito had just finished his birthday meal with some friends when his group chat on WhatsApp started blowing up.

His friends were urging the man better known as rapper Don EE to watch Beyonce’s latest Instagram video.

“I was thinking Beyonce had another fight with Jay-Z or something!” Elito says. “I wasn’t really paying attention because I was getting ready to go out.” But after the constant messages urging him to listen, he caved in and, when he eventually put the phone to his ear, he could hear that his song You Alright, Yh? was playing in the background of the multi-Grammy Award winner’s video.

“I just thought, ‘Wow!’. It goes to show music can fall into the lap of anyone and that it can travel,” he says. “At the time, in 2017, it was just a throwaway track, a song that you just send to your friends, but it kept getting played in house parties and then in the clubs. I saw Stormzy tweeting about it, then Tinie Tempah. Then, after the Beyonce thing, it just took off and exploded.”

What people didn’t know at the time was that Don EE was also a professional footballer.

Elito, when in a music setting, used to wear a Guy Fawkes mask to conceal his identity before he was unmasked by some team-mates. The day before Beyonce’s video helped his song to reach virality of stratospheric levels, Elito scored the winner for Cambridge United against Cheltenham Town — an accomplished header at the back post.

He went on to finish that 2016-17 campaign as League Two Cambridge’s fourth-top scorer but it was off the pitch where he was proving to be even more prolific. In addition to creating tracks with the likes of Afrobeats superstar Davido, he also performed at Wireless Festival and Wembley Arena. Even though his music career was scaling new heights, football always remained number one for Elito.

“Football is my main job,” he says. “With music, I didn’t really take it too seriously. Even now, when people call me an artist, I don’t call myself that. It’s just something I do for fun — a hobby I did after training to kill time.”

Elito and positive vibes go hand in hand, whether it’s in the dressing room, his music videos or his Instagram Live broadcasts, which grew to prominence during the pandemic lockdown last year.

“I love music, I love dancing,” the Londoner says. “Growing up, my brothers introduced me to people like Nas, KRS-One, old-school Busta Rhymes, Biggie, 2Pac, so I was always listening to them. I even tried the MC thing from time to time. Most of us did. It was just part of what we did growing up in Canning Town.”

Becoming a footballer was always the ambition, though, and it wasn’t before long until he started getting noticed; a dazzling winger who wasn’t afraid to express himself on the pitch. He was scouted by Colchester United aged 14 but admits times were hard, especially when it came to getting to training and matches, often making the train trip out to Essex alone or with his older brother.

“Sometimes, when I was playing well I’d wish, ‘If only mum and dad could be here’, especially when seeing other players’ parents on the sidelines,” Elito says.

“Some parents would come up to me and say, ‘Why don’t your parents come and watch you? You’re a good player’, but I guess those experiences just motivate you and make you strong-headed, which served me well.

“It’s not a sob story, though. My parents worked and we always got what we wanted for Christmas, but I remember my mum giving me the last £20 in her purse for me to get to training and back in Colchester. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have got there, so I’m happy that I’m in a position where I can give something back now.”

Elito was excelling on the pitch and after signing his scholarship with Colchester, then a Championship club, it became apparent that youth-team football was getting too easy for him — and he was beginning to impress first-team manager Geraint Williams. However, a situation with a train almost curtailed his senior football career before it had even got started.

“I was initially staying in digs but I moved out and went back home,” he says. “The dinners they (the host family) were making wasn’t for me; shepherd’s pie, cottage pie etc. After dinner, I’d ask if there was anything for snacks or desserts, and they said there wasn’t any.

“I thought, ‘These guys are getting paid £400 a month for food shopping!’, so one day when they were at work, I checked the cupboards and they were full of snacks! They’d been sitting there lying to me, so I asked the club if I could move back home.”

That decision ended up almost working against him. He was called to make his first-team debut away to Cardiff City in December 2007. As he was now back in Canning Town, the journey from home to the meeting point at Colchester’s training ground was significantly longer than if he’d been in digs. As he attempted to travel, he found the trains were delayed.

“I knew I was going to miss the coach, so I called my agent to come and get me. He called the gaffer to see if I could meet the coach at another meeting point, but he told me to, ‘Fuck off home!’” says the now 31-year-old. “I thought I’d blown it.”

Twenty-two scouts had been lined up to watch Elito in that game, such was the noise he was making at youth level.

He did eventually make his full senior debut against Plymouth the following March and his first start came a week later in, ironically, the reverse fixture against Cardiff, recording an assist in a 1-1 draw after lining up against a young Aaron Ramsey.

He was also an England youth international at this point — “It’s crazy when you see the squad list: Chelsea, Arsenal, West Ham, Manchester United… now here comes Medy from… Colchester” — and played at the Under-17 World Cup that summer in South Korea alongside the likes of Danny Welbeck, Danny Rose, Victor Moses and Henri Lansbury.

Clubs were clamouring for his signature and Manchester United were leading the queue, but a move fell through due to agent demands.

“I thought, 100 per cent, I was gonna go (to Manchester United),” says Elito. “It came out in the end that the agent didn’t want to let me go because he didn’t want to share his share of the deal with another agent. I thought, ‘Isn’t it, ‘player-first’?’ He didn’t know what could have come from that move — not just for me but for him. It would have opened a lot of doors for him.”

At the end of the 2007-08 campaign, Colchester were relegated from the Championship. By August 2011, Elito was in League Two with Dagenham & Redbridge, just a few miles down the road from his old Canning Town patch.

Elito, left, in action for Cambridge United in 2017 (Photo: Kevin Barnes – CameraSport via Getty Images)

Three years at Victoria Road was followed by a season at Dutch second-tier side VVV Venlo. There, he lined up against a young Memphis Depay who, as well as going on to play for Manchester United, Lyon, Barcelona and the Netherlands, is forging a fledgling rap career of his own.

Elito is grateful for the footballing education he received there and says he returned to the EFL a much better player — “touch, vision, awareness, everything” — excelling for Newport County, then Cambridge before spells in the National League with Barnet and now north London neighbours Wealdstone.

With nearly 400 games across five leagues spanning 14 seasons, Elito has had a solid career to date. His love of music was also seeing him flourish off the pitch, too.

The relationship between football and rap is intertwined, and runs deeper than John Barnes’s solo on World In Motion, despite its cult status.

There are clear parallels with individuals involved in both professions: working-class roots, often from the inner cities, with a sheer determination to forge careers for themselves in the booth or on the pitch. Of course, it’s not a one-size-fits-all journey, but the similarities in backgrounds allow both sides to relate and therefore interact with each other on a deeper level.

With rap, grime and now drill now fully established in UK popular culture, music’s relationship with football has grown tighter still, with both professions now fully aware of how the other can support them, especially in a commercial sense.

A pertinent example came in 2016 when Paul Pogba rejoined Manchester United from Juventus. He featured alongside Stormzy in his announcement video, with the rapper performing his song Nigo Duppy.

More recently, Jack Grealish appeared on stage at Leeds festival with Stormzy, while Pogba joined Burna Boy on stage at Parklife festival in Manchester. Both players made their appearances after wins for the respective clubs that weekend.

England’s official European Championship song this summer, meanwhile, was produced by grime artists Krept & Konan.

(The Beyonce Instagram post that shot You Alright, Yh? to prominence)

UK rappers such as Don Strapzy, Dave and Headie One also commonly make plenty of football references in their lyrics, further highlighting the close relationship between the two professions.

Footballers’ and rappers’ similar backgrounds have also led to some blurred lines. Tinchy Strider (Wimbledon, Leyton Orient), Kano (Chelsea, West Ham and Norwich) and Akala (West Ham United) have all played in the academy system, while Matt Robinson, also known as Kamakaze, grew up at Leicester City and now plays for Dagenham & Redbridge in the National League. His song Last Night featured on the FIFA 2020 soundtrack.

Meanwhile, there are a handful of footballers, like Elito, Depay and Barnes, who have tried their hand at rapping, including Ian Wright, Ryan Babel and Royston Drenthe. Yannick Bolasie and Bradley Wright-Phillips even went head-to-head in grime’s legendary Lord of the Mics in 2014.

So football’s and music’s influences on Elito are due to him being a product of his surroundings growing up. He formed close friendships with Yxng Bane and Kojo Funds, with the trio producing the song Balenciaga in 2015.

“Training Monday to Friday was from 9 or 9.30 to 1pm, so it’s a case of, ‘What are you doing for the rest of the day?’” Elito says. “I wanted to be productive and I’d usually go to the studio with Bane and Kojo to record. Wednesdays were my day off, so that’s when I’d make sure we got any music videos shot.”

It was 2017 was when everything appeared to click, with Elito combining his good performances on the pitch with his ever-growing music career. As Cambridge missed out on the play-offs that spring, Elito was a standout performer alongside Uche Ikpeazu and Luke Berry, both of whom now play in the Championship for Middlesbrough and Luton Town respectively.

A month after that season ended, Elito was performing on stage at Wireless Festival in north London in front of 12,000 people.

“It was a crazy year,” he reflects. “Football was going well and then music was just blowing up. My song was doing well, then Wireless and the Queen B — Beyonce — situation just made everything crazy.

Don EE in the video for his song Wiggle It, featuring Ms Banks

“People often ask me what’s better: a whole crowd singing your lyrics or smacking it top bins?” says Elito. “When I step out on the pitch, I never get nervous. I cross the white line, everything goes. I could be playing against Roberto Carlos and I wouldn’t care. But of course, when you score an amazing goal or do a crazy skill that gets the crowd off their feet, it’s great. It’s hard to describe.

“But for Wireless, I was like, ‘Wow!’ When you see everyone in front of you… imagine if they don’t know your song. But when I started and everyone was singing along, the adrenaline was pumping, and when it got to the chorus… that was a mad feeling. I never knew so many people knew the song like that! “

It led to Elito collaborating with Davido in 2018 for the song Love Coming Down.

Things were continuing to go from strength to strength.

Cambridge’s players were preparing for a group spin session in the gym before training, led by manager Shaun Derry.

The music blared. Some rap, some house. Don EE’s You Alright, Yh? was next on the playlist.

Up to this point, most of Elito’s team-mates didn’t know about his secret double life.

“I think only a few people knew but then, when my song came on, Uche (Ikpeazu) started shouting, ‘That’s my boy!’ and started jumping on me,” says Elito. “I was thinking, ‘No! You’re making a scene!’

“Now all the boys knew and when it came to the spinning session and the gaffer was asking what songs to play, Bradley Halliday shouted, ‘Play Medy’s track!’.”

Derry hit play and not only enjoyed it, but went on to offer private words of encouragement.

“It was good because, usually, people are like, ‘You should only focus on football’,” Elito says. “But the gaffer — and, in fact, all managers I’ve played under — say they’re happy for me to be doing something outside football.

“They said I was lucky that I had a talent and also the time to do other things after training. Often in football, when you’re thrown in from the academy, it’s very full-on and you don’t get time to learn other skills, but you have to remember that football is a short career and doing certain things now will help for when you retire.”

The mask was off, literally and figuratively.

Rappers including M Huncho continue to perform in masks that conceal their identity, adding to their mystique. It’s something Elito revelled in, but he also sees the benefits of finally showing his face when he performs, especially in a commercial sense.

Plus, “it was so hot under there sometimes, the way I would be sweating…”

In addition to music, Elito’s off-pitch ventures include a manufacturing business and a YouTube channel, Baller Talk, in which he speaks about issues in the game alongside James Alabi of Bromley, Boreham Wood defender Femi Ilesanmi. Special guests have included Adebayo Akinfenwa, Ivan Toney, Jordon Ibe and Eni Aluko.

Football, of course, remains number one and Elito is keen to make an impact at Wealdstone after taking a year away from the game when he left Barnet following the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season. He’s played in nine of their 11 league games so far, starting five and scoring the only goal in stoppage time of last month’s win over Altrincham.

“My thing is to get a good run of games and to make noise,” he said. “Yes, I had a year out, but I want to show people that I’m still the same player and can still make noise at 31, and get goals and assists.

“If I can do that, then who knows? I could be in League Two next season. You never know in football.”

(Top photo: Jack Thomas/Getty Images)

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