Dumped by Def Jam following her failed attempt to crack the American market, Lady Sovereign returns to Britain to find her lippy, dimwit banter outpaced by cultural turnover.
This kind of observational demotic has been done with more wit and care by Lily Allen and Kate Nash, and that affected, brat-speak delivery has long since become dated. The main problem is that the appealing chorus of the album opener, "Let's Be Mates" – "I'm weird, and you're weird, let's be mates" – is belied in lazy raps that actually celebrate her lack of any idiosyncratic charm or weirdness. In "Pennies", she moans about getting ripped off; "Food Play" recycles grub-based sexual clichés that are far less amusing than she imagines; and in "Guitar", she reacts to her inability to master this democratic instrument with infantile petulance. Face? Bovvered? If it wasn't already clear that she was suffering the classic inferiority complex of a school dropout, "Student Union" offers her opinion that "it was crap at the student uni bar". With such Wildean ripostes, how can she fail? Sadly, time abroad has also decoupled her musically – when the most potent backing on your album is the Cure sample in "So Human", it's time for a rethink. Maybe she should have stayed in America and learned from the more interesting M.I.A. and Santogold.
Download this: 'Let's Be Mates', 'So Human'
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