Lady Jane DJ feels that Lady Sovereign is a breath of fresh air for Women in Hip Hop. I thank Jay-Z for bringing her into Def Jam. Hip Hop needed a person like Lady Sov. There are many special things about this lady.
Excerpt:"Lady Sovereign: The country's fourth biggest chav
In the US, Lady Sovereign is billed as the next Eminem, and has signed to Jay-Z's record label. Back home in the UK, she's been crowned the country's fourth biggest chav. Johnny Davis joins her on both sides of the Atlantic to hear about her past, present and wildly promising future.
he booing starts before Lady Sovereign reaches the stage. As the minutes drain past, the audience begin banging tables slowly with their fists. " This sucks!" shouts someone. Sovereign's soundman and DJ look helplessly at each other, and get back to fiddling with their wires.
At the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, an artist's career can hinge on a single performance. The annual A&R bunfight sees some 1,300 acts flood the city, hoping to further their chances by impressing the maximum number of industry bigwigs. Lady Sovereign, the 20-year-old London MC of whom great things are expected, had been due to perform at the Victory Grill, a lively eastside bar, at 7pm. By 8.40pm, problems with the venue's DAT, then MiniDisc, then CD player mean she's still waiting stage right. Eventually, she bounds on. Two verses into the first song, "Random", the sound cuts out. Sovereign, who describes her act as "half MC-ing, half improvised stand-up", is left to wing it. A good time, she reasons, to make fun of the exasperated audience's accents and talk about her experiences in the toilet "after a good curry". Then she sits cross-legged and encourages everyone to boo the venue. Remarkably, this tactic works. Though Sovereign eventually quits while she's behind - the sound hiccuping through four more songs - her super-sized personality is pure endearment. She exits to cheers.
In the car park, Sovereign belches melodically, asks around for "a cancer stick" and declares victory. "Sometimes when I do that American accent," she says, "it can really lose the room."
A celebratory drink is called for and Team Sovereign - manager, DJ, others - head to The Driscoll, Austin's swankest hotel, in their hired Chevy Suburban. En route, Sovereign listens to old rave songs on her iPod ("Oh, big tune!") and smokes grass with her DJ. After some deft footwork past the bar staff - in America, Sovereign is not only underage, but at 5ft 1 she looks it - she deposits herself on a sofa beneath the mounted head of an enormous longhorn deer. "That's bigger than you," giggles her DJ. Horror-film-sized taxidermy, however, is the last thing she needs. "I'm intoxicated," she splutters. "I'm completely messed up."
Lady Sovereign is currently Britain's brightest musical export. Born of the MC scene of London's council estates, her bolshy, witty, self-deprecating songs fuse Eminem's pop-cultural eye with Missy Elliott's good-time street smarts. On "Ch-Ching", she boasts, "Got kicked out of school due to bunking/ Now look at me, the multitalented munchkin". On "Tango", she takes to task girls wearing fake tan: "Bring out the detergent/ Scrub that Oompa-Loompa/ It's urgent". And on "Hoodie", she champions the Bluewater-baiting attire (a defence that earnt her an unexpected audience with Gordon Brown at Number 10 last autumn)."
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