Meet Da New Ting
U.K. MC Lady Sovereign freshens up hip-hop with a dose of grime
She's blown off a day of press interviews, dared to rib the drawl of chart-ruling Midwestern and Southern rappers, and temporarily rebuffed Jay-Z's offer to pair her up with American beat makers for her debut album, due in the spring. So what's not to like about the five-foot, one-inch British MC known as Lady Sovereign?
In an American hip-hop world of Bentleys, bling, and big-ass rims (bad nauseum), Lady Sovereign is an absolute sensation. Since the rule of Elvis, the pop-music planet has fragmented into small satellites of influence, making crossover stardom more and more difficult. But every few years the occasional supernova appears, an artist so refreshingly different and rebellious that the atmosphere is shocked, and the path of the pop universe is forever set on a different course. Ironically, the white dwarf also known as Sov and S-O-V is realigning the planets with her spin on British grime, a U.K. form of rap based on post-rave, dancehall-flavored beats. Good thing. American hip-hop of late has become a bad dream.
"We've been on the road here for a week listening to radio, and it's just the same old thing," Sovereign says. "It's rare to hear something that's really, really fresh. Hip-hop's cool, but it's gotten a little bit tired, you know what I mean?"
Sov is the kick in the arse that hip-hop needs right now. The 19-year-old is stripping the game back down to its pure elements: a microphone, writing talent, and a bottomless well of class, race, and inner-city rebellion - the stuff that used to drive American pop. "I prefer things that are quirky and different and weird rather than the average hip-hop beat, things that are more out of this world," she says.
On Sov's debut EP, Vertically Challenged, released last month, she emerges with tongue-wagging irreverence, yapping, growling, whispering, and even burping over epileptic grooves that blurt with EQ-bursting basslines, staccato percussion, and the simplistic Casio-esque keys of dancehall. To hear Sov's voice is a revelation. "This is da new ting," she says, combining her own street London swagger with ragga patois. "Random" is the most sizzling joint on her eight-song EP, blazing with momentous braggadocio as she clowns the Midwestern- and Southern-flavored pronunciation popular in rap, saying, "Right hurr, nah, right here/Now get off your churr, I mean chair." With "A Little Bit of Shhh," we can't help thinking Sov's borrowing cheekily from Austin Powers. And on "Ch Ching," Sov rhymes, "I'm the best thing since sliced bread, no Eminem/Feminine? Nah, Ms. Sovereign." Indeed.
No one ever thought grime would make it across the pond, let alone inside England, where it's still considered a twisted little brother of mainstream U.K. hip-hop. The British grime sound descended from drum 'n' bass, garage, and the urban rave scene, where MCs were instrumental. The comparatively uptempo, dance-floor oriented genre from East and North London has grown quickly, with Sov becoming its third American breakout attempt, following the Streets and Dizzee Rascal. But while the Streets is introspective and almost emo, and Dizzee's back-of-the-throat accent doesn't compute, Sov seems to translate well. She's pouting, defiant, repetitious, anti-aristocratic.
Born Louise Harman in 1987, the year of Public Enemy's First London Invasion Tour, Sov grew up in the Chalkhill Estate projects north of London, where "the walls were paper-thin," she says, "and I could hear the neighbors' music - everything." She ended up dropping out of school and, by age 14, falling in with a DJ and grime crew by posting her rhymes online. While British pirate stations gave voice to drum 'n' bass in the '90s, underground blogs and music sites are giving birth to grime. Sov calls her first recordings posted online "shitty, low-budget attempts."
But her flow and defiant style set off a buzz in the blogosphere. And now she's here. In 2004, Sov toured with the Basement Jaxx, and last summer she had an audition with Jay-Z that led to a deal with Def Jam. Her Def Jam LP, tentatively titled Public Warning, is reportedly due next spring. Although Sov originally rebuffed Jay-Z's offerings of superstar producers for the record, saying the CD had already been recorded in the U.K., she now says she's going to New York to work in the studio with Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo, and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park. She says she'll decide afterward whether to add the stateside tracks to her CD. "I'm not working with loads of Americans," Sov insists. "I'm just doing what I want to do." V
Published: 12/08/2005
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
