Compared to the bullet-riddled 50 Cent, the incarcerated Beanie Sigel, or anyone from the remaining bevy of menacing, hostile and accomplished rappers, Lady Sovereign is almost comically unimposing. Her side ponytail drapes easily onto her shoulder, allowing an unobstructed view of her disarming brown eyes. She's 19, 5'1", a girl and British (they can't fight). But appearances aside, make no mistake about it: Lady Sovereign will f-k you up.
Armed with a Cockneyed novelty and a mad Napoleonic complex, the West London/Wembley grime rapper-trix, "Sov" (real name: Louise Harman) is spitting and snarling her way to the top of the global rap scene with lightning speed, and threatens to put her budding genre smack dab in the American music limelight.
Her rap career began in adolescence, when she would bum around to friends' houses, recording entire 30-minute shows and immediately posting them on the Internet. Sov crafted her penetrating, razor-sharp delivery thus until, at 18, she debuted in earnest on this year's "Run the Road" grime compilation.
Released by London's 679 Records, the album looked to capitalize on the increasing global popularity of grime/garage/two-step - a young, dance-friendly sound coming from the British underground and ghettos. The frenzied snare hits, booming bass punches, robotic melodies and lyrical prowess of Dizzee Rascal and The Streets, two of grime's would-be superstars, were garnering heaps of critical and commercial accolades, and at the height of their popularity, 679 released this collection of tracks from the nascent genre's lesser known artists.
"Run the Road" is stacked, one of this year's best reviewed albums, but emerging from the pack of quality, bone-chilling, head-nodding, rump-shaking tracks - including a previously unreleased banger from Dizzee Rascal - was this random white girl barely old enough to drive. With its manically thundering beat and Sov's breakneck vocals, "Cha Ching (Cheque 1, 2 Remix)" stole what was supposed to be a Dizzee Rascal/The Streets show, and introduced the world to the fierce "multitalented munchkin" who really is in a class of her own.
What makes her sovereign?
For one thing, no one has a voice like Sov's. Start with the delicate pipes of a good-looking, diminutive teenage girl and mangle it with packs and packs of cheap cigarettes and god knows how much Pernod (a favorite lyrical topic). Weather it with the frustration of being a woman in a male-dominated genre, and spike it on the streets of West London's housing projects, and you have her uniquely throaty, gravely vocals.
She matches her distinctive voice with an equally peerless delivery. Sov impeccably dances atop syllables and flies through entire verses with a velocity that the 32-year-old Twista took a career to develop. Her intelligibility is even more impressive, given that half the time it's impossible to even understand cockney British subtitles, much less speedy rap vocals.
"Cha Ching" immediately spotlights these strengths, opening with Sov spitting her now-trademark chip-on-shoulder self-aggrandizement. "I'm the best thing since sliced bread, no Eminem / Feminine? Nah / Ms. Sovereign? Yeah!" she narrowly spurts as she proceeds to diss her fans, among other phantom nemeses. It was this voice and this delivery that drowned out her peers on "Run the Road," and had a handful of executives seeing Euro signs.
The success of "Run the Road" and "Cha Ching (Cheque 1, 2 Remix)" made Sov a sensation in her native UK, where she released several well received singles, including "Hoodie" with techno megastars Basement Jaxx, an ode to her favorite outer layer much maligned by Britain's recent anti-terror campaign. Her success in the UK set off a race for the rights to release her debut EP, "Vertically Challenged," in the United States. The honor fell to Chicago indie-rap label Chocolate Industries, home of American underground studs Vast Aire and Diverse, and former home of fellow Englishman Roots Manuva.
Sovereign goes vertical
"Vertically Challenged" dropped earlier this month, and while not the grime masterpiece that her singles suggested, it is a tantalizing early look at a highly animated and disgustingly talented young rapper. "Random," the EP's standout track, in which she backhands J-Kwon, Chingy and Ludacris (in the first verse!), showcases the fiery fem-cee's boldness and aggression through astounding verbal acumen. "Smokin' kills and so do my lyrics / If you're poppin' pills then trash in a-with-it / 'cause I got the skills / And I'm over the limit / Dishin' lyrics like meals every second every minute." Sov burns the quintessentially grimey techno-bass throbs of "A Little Bit of SHH," knifing through the track with lunatic self-props like "They should put my voice on an ice cream van / That way the streets wouldn't be bland."
In truth, though, "Vertically Challenged" will probably not be the grime release to finally make a serious impact stateside: Chocolate Industries simply does not have the distribution capacity to get Sov the exposure to infiltrate the callous American hip-hop industry. Nonetheless, one American Sov fan is looking to help her do just that.
In support of "Challenged," Chocolate Industries booked Sov on a 16-day, eight-show tour of North America that began Monday in Boston (we'll get to that in a second), but before the tour began, Jay-Z, purportedly captivated by the teenager's ability, summoned her to Def Jam's Manhattan headquarters for an impromptu audition of sorts with an audience of Usher, Def Jam chair Antonio Reid and Jigga himself. If the audience wasn't tough enough, the circumstances were. According to Sov, the hip-hop mogul, nearly twice her age and a full foot taller, asked her to "spit something on the spot."
"I don't normally get nervous," she says on her Web site. "But I didn't want him picking me up by the scruff on my neck and throwing me out the window." Not quite. After three 16-bar freestyles, Lady Sovereign was signed to Def Jam satellite La Familia. Moreover, according to a British fan site, Hov' intends to team Sov with Def Jam superstar Missy Elliott and hit-makers The Neptunes for tracks on her 2006 full-length debut, tentatively titled "Public Warning." She is now the first and only British grimester to boast a major stateside distribution deal and signing, but this is not the only leg-up she has on her genre-mates. Unlike her more talented peers, Lady Sovereign can perform.
Live and kicking
One of the most serious stateside knocks on grime is that it cannot make the transition from headphones to stage. The appeal, the Yanks seem to think, is in the music's production, the minute technical refinements that are no problem in the studio but a crippling bane in a club. Such was the downfall of the ill-fated The Streets/Dizzee Rascal American tour and this writer's earlier critique of M.I.A.'s Boston gig two months ago. On Monday at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge, Lady Sovereign kicked off her first full American tour to a sold out audience of less than 200, and took a lead pipe to this consensus of live grime.
Hitting the stage in a red Adidas tracksuit and sporting her usual youthful side pony-tail, Harman hijacked the audience's attention and clung to it like she wasn't coming back. On tracks like "Broom" and the Internet-only "Tango," a vitriolic harangue of fake tanning, her delivery is as shank-sharp as in the studio. She methodically plodded through the standard vocal time signature of "Hoodie" and sprinted like a shoplifter through the jaw-dropping verses of "Cha Ching" with equal volume and comfort.
She strutted the stage right. She held the mic right. She bobbed her pointer finger right. She dealt with a faulty sound system. From a technical standpoint, she did the big and little things with the poise of a battle-tested vet - and she can't even drink here. Still, mechanical abilities notwithstanding, what will put Sov over the top in this country is what she did between songs.
Girl's got personality, period. Beyond her I'm-a-short-British-girl schtick, she's a hilarious and engaging person the likes of which I don't think American hip-hop has ever seen. A female audience member pressed against the stage impulsively shouted, "I love you!" at a lull in the show; Sov responded by mocking the fan-girl and calling her, in perfect Cockney, a "silly bitch." Sov's explanation of "Broom," a song about a broomstick with which Harman beat one of her girlfriends (whom she also referred to as a "silly bitch") and the audience's ensuing laughter delayed the start of the song.
Here to stay
Lady Sovereign is not the best grime producer (Dizzee Rascal) or rapper (Jammer or D Double E). She's not the most imaginative artist (Kano), and she wasn't the first to do something big with the sound (Wiley). Overall, she's not the most talented artist of the genre, but if grime succeeds in the United States, it'll be on her coattails, because unlike all of the aforementioned artists, she's a flippin' character.
Spin Magazine's Chuck Klosterman has said that bands like British pomp-rock act The Darkness will never succeed in America because Americans are too stern to appreciate irony. I disagree. I think it is the ironic appeal of a 19-year old, 5'1, white, Cockney British fem-cee with a massive chip on her shoulder and planet-sized personality that will open our musical borders to a genre that the rest of the world has known about for a year now, and allow the talent to speak for itself. Let's hope so anyway.
