Those Were The Days
Not enough hip-hop mentions Safeway trolleys, nutters with ginger beards and Sega Megadrives. For that reason we should cherish Lady Sovereign, who managed to take such arcane references and turn them into US gold dust. It helps that her beats follow the standard American pop rap model. You have to admire the sheer absurdity of it all.
REVIEW: 2007-03-26
Public Warning
She’s as potty-mouthed as Peaches and boasts the Streets smarts of Mike Skinner – she is Lady Sovereign and on Public Warning she’s chavin’ it large.
REVIEW: 2007-02-12
Love Me Or Hate Me
The feisty tyke is back with a song whose video was the first by a British artist to reach No. 1 on the US’s Total Request Live. While on this side of the Atlantic, the climate’s changed considerably since she left (Amy Winehouse has become wiser, people have forgotten about chavs, Lily Allen’s stolen her schtick but wears pink dresses), her grime rapping is an anti-establishment, bold statement that puts her firmly on the musical map again. To quote the young lady, “I ain’t got the biggest breastesis/But I write all the bestest hits”.
REVIEW: 2007-01-24
'Hoodie' [Island] / C-Mone-Second After Second
With a growing media profile, a Basement Jaxx remix and a subject matter tuned into the cultural zeitgeist, you’d be hard pushed to see how Lady Sovereign’s ‘Hoodie’ could be anything but a rip-roaring success. Yet something’s not quite right. It certainly rattles along at an invigorating pace and is blessed with some choice one liners but maybe it’s the fact that the melody isn’t strong enough to compete with everything else that’s going on.
In comparison to Sov’s big production, C-Mone’s track sounds like it was recorded on a lap-top in her bedroom but is the more effective of the two. With a lyric that takes in the famine in Sudan, gun culture and old age pensioners struggling to pay council tax, C-Mone could have it in her to give M.I.A. a run for the Brit-hop crown.
REVIEW: 2005-11-30
'Hoodie' [Island]/C-Mone Second After Second
With a growing media profile, a Basement Jaxx remix and a subject matter tuned into the cultural zeitgeist, you’d be hard pushed to see how Lady Sovereign’s ‘Hoodie’ could be anything but a rip-roaring success. Yet something’s not quite right. It certainly rattles along at an invigorating pace and is blessed with some choice one liners but maybe it’s the fact that the melody isn’t strong enough to compete with everything else that’s going on.
In comparison to Sov’s big production, C-Mone’s track sounds like it was recorded on a lap-top in her bedroom but is the more effective of the two. With a lyric that takes in the famine in Sudan, gun culture and old age pensioners struggling to pay council tax, C-Mone could have it in her to give M.I.A. a run for the Brit-hop crown.
REVIEW: 2005-11-25
