British rapper Lady Sovereign made her reputation on being loud, annoying and obnoxious – qualities that worked magic on her pugnacious debut, “Public Warning.” The album seemed to have it all: raw and abrasive beats, irritating cockney accents, and wonderfully inscrutable references to British pop culture. No wonder she was a surprise hit in the US, picking up attention from such industry magnates as Jay-Z and Missy Elliott; compared to most contemporary rap, “Public Warning” seemed like an artifact from a different universe, a strange place where you were more likely to find Shepherd’s Pie and Heineken beers than pimps and hoes. Back in 2006, she was rap’s Lily Allen, a bewildering, foul-mouthed oddity that drew in American listeners much like a strange alien species.
The album could easily have been a bad joke – and on occasion it does cross the line from amusing to irritating – but Lady Sov had an irrepressible energy and a sense of humour that most stand-up comics would kill for. Check this, the chorus from the album’s brilliant cod-National Anthem “My England”: “We ain't all posh like the Queen, we ain't all squeaky clean / now do the Tony Blair, throw your hands in the air.”
On her long-awaited second album, “Jigsaw,” it’s exactly this snarky wit that’s missing. Lady Sov’s sense of humour seems to have vanished, to be replaced by a rather sickening, “ooh, heart on my sleeve” earnestness. On far too many songs, she even tries her hand at singing, seemingly convinced that she’ll sound more heartfelt if she’s straining for notes like a tone-deaf chorister. It ain’t a pretty sound.
Even less appealing is the gloopy, MOR polish in which the whole album seems to have been dunked. Where her debut was a British hip-hop record through and through, making few concessions to mainstream pop, “Jigsaw” seems to be aiming more for the P!nk, Kelly Clarkson crowd, adding a distressing number of guitars, synths and – eek! – even strings into the mix.
As a crossover tactic it’s ludicrous, really, because the idea of anyone in Kelly Clarkson’s fan-base picking up a Lady Sovereign album is about as far-fetched as a life-long death metal fanatic deciding to pick up the new Kylie Minogue. It seems as if Lady Sov has forgotten what made her successful in the first place: It was for being British girl who had no shame in sounding it, not for being a British girl desperately trying to sound American. And it certainly wasn’t for her singing ability.
The album starts off on a reassuringly wacky note, with the unhinged electro-pop of “Let’s Be Mates.” It’s prime Lady Sov, a crescendo of increasingly odd non-sequiturs building into the wonderfully frank chorus, “I’m weird, and you’re weird / let’s be mates.” It’s a great track, bubbly and pleasingly discordant, but as a sampler of things to come, it’s extremely misleading. Weird is what I wish this album was, and soon as the opener’s day-glo synths have faded, listeners are thrust head-first into pop sell-out land.
First up is “So Human,” an utterly shameless reinvention of the Cure’s “Close to Me” that lifts everything from the original – chorus, beat, riff, lyrics – except its delicious sense of paranoia. There is something audacious about the song, but only in its sheer plagiaristic nerve.
Next up, and considerably worse, is the title track – a horrendously “sincere” and “heartfelt” pile of schlock that sees Lady Sov moaning tunelessly about how sad she is over a soppy morass of faux-acoustic guitars and swirling strings. By the time the song collapses into its synthetic bridge, you’ll be convinced you’ve somehow stumbled into a Celine Dion record: it’s a scary moment.
Still, it’s nothing compared to the bewildering “Guitar,” a monotonous and really very bizarre song with no melody, no hook, and seemingly no reason to exist. “If I could play guitar then I’d play it, but I can’t so I’ll just sing it,” Lady Sov half-raps over a sloppy string arrangement, and that’s pretty much all that happens. For three and a half minutes. If it’s meant to be a self-aware dig at her total lack of singing ability then it’s pretty funny, but the ponderously sincere production somehow makes me doubt that. Any song with this many violins can’t be a joke.
Other parts of the album do consciously aim for humour, but that doesn’t make them any better. Where Lady Sov’s humour used to hit the mark, now it careens aimlessly between lame and downright offensive. Falling firmly in the latter category is “Student Union,” in which Lady Sov recounts her boring night at a university bar. It’s a premise rich with possibility, but instead of offering any kind of clever satire, Lady Sov simply rants and raves at undergrads like some kind of retarded juvenile delinquent. The song reaches its nadir as she slurs out “shouldn’t you lot, like, be studying or something,” before launching into the song’s remarkably inane chorus: “At the student union bar / it was all like / la, la, la, la.” Hmm. Quite a wit you have there, missy.
Nowhere near as offensive but just as unfunny is the sluggish “Food Love,” a ham-fisted ode to food fetishes. Again, it could easily be hilarious, and the chorus is a killer – “Sugar, honey, sexy baby / don’t think I ain’t noticed you’re teasing me with food lately” – but Lady Sov’s delivery is disappointingly leaden, as is the production.
“Jigsaw” may largely be a disappointment, but it does have a handful of strong tracks. The surging, synth-driven “Pennies” sounds like M.I.A.’s “$20,” and that’s no insult; “Bang Bang” is a skittering, bleeping delight, brimming with the kind of absurd rhymes that made Lady Sov a star; and best of all is first single “I Got You Dancing,” a growling, auto-tune-heavy club track in which Lady Sov sounds like T-Pain’s deranged cockney cousin. Admittedly, none of the tracks have the raw edge and attitude of her debut, but they sound terrific compared to the half-arsed pap that makes up most of “Jigsaw.”
So what lesson do I take away from this cluttered mess of a record? It’s obvious, and it’s a sad one: Even the most staunchly independent of artists can sell out. On “Love Me Or Hate Me (Fuck You!!!),” the snotty 2007 single that made Lady Sovereign a star, she repeatedly rapped what seemed at the time to be her manifesto: “I can’t sing, and I can’t dance / the only thing that I can do is just be Lady Sovereign.” Three years later, these words are depressingly apt.
"Jigsaw" released on April 6, 2009 by EMI Records.
Images courtesy of EMI Records and Empire Online.
Published in the Nassau Weekly.
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