Love her or hate her, pint-sized, potty-mouthed rapper Lady Sovereign was the model council-estate-girl-dun-good. She went from riding the UK’s grime wave to palling up with Jay-Z, who helmed her 2006 debut album Public Warning on his Def Jam label. But shifting musical landscapes and a Lohan-scale onstage hissy fit meant Sov slunk back under the radar.
Trust a cocksure gal from Wembley to reinvent herself and readjust the spotlight. She’s ditched the scrunchies and perma-tracksuits of old for new Medasyn-produced and dance-floor-focused record Jigsaw. Gone are any lingering grime clatters: instead it tangles the threads of fluoro-rave with electro-house stabs, pop hooks and womping basslines. While this will be audio alcopop for the youth, more refined ears might find the resulting sonic cocktail overbearing. But dodge past her collision with Bodyrocks (Let’s Be Mates), the title track’s hurl-inducing strings, and what can only be described as Gollum rapping on the André 3000-channeling Food Play, and there are some stand-alone stonkers.
I Got You Dancing is the shape-throwing soundtrack with its groin-wobbling electro-hop beats and vocoderific chorus. Then there’s Bang Bang, which bounces Baltimore beats alongside cosmic pop, and the tongue-in-cheek skankin’ of Student Union.
Notably Sov’s taken to singing too, her trademark machine-gun rhymes often substituted for catchy choruses, as evident on her Cure-pilfering pop moment So Human and steamrollered by the eclectro-production overdose. Sov may just wanna make people move these days, but sadly it’s at the expense of her earlier recordings’ bubbling volatility.
Kate Hutchinson