Lady Sovereign

The very fact that I like her record should be the end of her career. Poor Lady Sovereign. The people who enjoyed her in the first place have moved on and she’s left with me and the rest of the Radio 6 audience.

That is the problem for underground acts though. Once you are in the mainstream, you’ve lost your underground status, your mainstream career will be probably be short-lived and then the underground won’t have you back because they can’t forgive you for ever leaving them in the first place and anyway they’ve got someone new who‘s better than you ...and they were lying when they said they fancied you.....and anyway.... you smell.

As always there is a bit of a story. Lets introduce the characters and hope there’s a happy ending. Once upon a time Lady Sovereign, was cast as the reverse Miss Dynamite. So while MD and her positive message was welcomed into Indie arms as a Brits Nomination and a breath of fresh air from the underground, Lady Sov was the stale air wafting up the escalator, the female Mike Skinner, brash white trash and in tabloid terms...The First Lady of Chav.

She appeared on a remix of The Streets Fit But You Know It and also as The Ordinary Boys vs Lady Sovereign on 9 2 5 (which was a remake of her own song 9 to 5). Her original version of 9 to 5 had a bit of an Eminem feel and the video is vintage era Madness, camcorder style. Well it’s got a bus, toy saxophones and hats. Her material is based on the specialist subject of Rappers since the dawn of time. Me, me, me and me...and (the obligatory) Haters.

By the time Julie Burchill had built a Chav documentary round her for Sky 1 (that would be a existential Pot and Kettle conversation on the meaning of blackness....followed by an episode of Britain’s Hardest Pubs) the game was up.

So she hauled herself off America, where she became the first non American woman to sign to Def Jam. Now her gimmick is that she’s a female British Rapper rather than the British view of her as MC Chav. So, are we ready to buy her back?

Love Me Or Hate was released as a single last year in States, but is only just starting to get mainstream radio play here. (ie I’ve only just heard it... I make no apologies about that. I find it hard enough keeping my ear to the ground, let alone to the Underground especially as I’m not actually a teenager and I don’t live in the ‘Hood, although I do sometimes catch a bus that goes quite near it)

The backing track is a descending series of squelchy electronic bleeps and sounds like the music from the Boss scene of a particularly crazed video game, you know the bit where you’re on a skateboarding donkey and are trying to dodge the low flying coconuts. It sounds excellent. It may well provide ammunition for any one old fashioned enough to actually like a tune, to complain that “All modern music sounds like a ringtone.” But so what. As I said, it sounds excellent.

It’s a killer playground taunt of a chorus...Love me or hate me that is the question. If you love me Well thank Yooooooooou. If you hate me well Fuck you.” The way she sings Yooooooou just make s me laugh. It’s not big or clever or even original but it’s funny and jauntily juvenile.

To put the record in a context, it’s a gimmicky song that just sounds right. It’s like the “Ow” in Althea and Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking, or Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s Push It or even (and I’m loathe to mention it in case I have to make a defence for it) Whigfield’s Saturday Night.

There are lines about missing shepherds pie and “I’m the funky little monkey with the tiniest ears, I don’t like drinking fancy champy I’ll stick with Heineken beers.” She plays to American perceptions of England with “Oh gosh I’m not posh” and about being The Royal Highness who doesn’t own a corgi (but she did have a hamster that died ‘cos she ignored it) but the line that really shows that she’s English and means business in America is the defiant “I’m English try and deport me.”

Lady Sovereign is the Wembley girl, the self styled “Biggest midget in the game”, who started rapping and doing online rhyming battles in chat rooms because “I didn’t go to school because it was boring so I stayed at home watching Trish and that was boring.”

The UK sent her packing after too much Vicky Pollard and Catherine Tate but America has not got that baggage. She’s got through customs and she may well be picking up her lost luggage. But will we have her back?