"I'VE NEVER BEEN YOUR AVERAGE RAPPER"
A 5 ft 1 pixie with giant passion, ambition and sheer raw talent, if there is one theme running through the magical existence of Lady Sovereign, then it's that of being a fiercely independent creative spirit who, one way or another, was born to be different.
From grasping her unique talent for rolling her tongue around words at the tender age of 13 in the bedroom of her North London council estate, to being signed to Def Jam by Jay Z; from being kicked out of school at fifteen for avoiding class and being told "you're not going to do very well in your GCSEs, anyway", to performing on David Letterman, touring with Gwen Stefani, recording sessions with Pharrell and The Beastie Boys and selling over a million units of her single, "Love Me Or Hate Me"; the story of Sov's charmed life is one of stellar achievement against a backdrop of the most unlikely of circumstances.
"I'm not your average rapper. I've always felt that I'm different to everyone else and I never approach things the way everyone else does. It's without trying. I don't understand it."
Perhaps one way to understand it is to begin with Sov's natural-born flow. Or her amazing all-guns-ablazing voice. Perhaps her steadfast self-belief. Maybe her innate feel for beats. Her refusal to compromise or snugly fit in with the well-oiled machinery of the music industry. Maybe it is simply that rare thing in a world where manufactured reinvention rules; the ability to be nobody else but herself. Or perhaps it's just that music has always been her blood.
"I always remember hearing music. Every genre you could think of. My mum was a punk, then a raver, then it was all house stuff. You couldn't sleep sometimes because music was always blaring out. I'm compulsive when it comes to music. I have to have everything. I have to hear a new song everyday."
Not your average rapper, then. And, off on a first class flight to New York to meet Jay Z and finding herself towering over Times Square in the form of a 60 foot billboard, certainly not your average 23 year old from a North London estate.
But while being different is sometimes a blessing that can win you hundreds and thousands of global fans, the admiration of Jay-Z ("he called me Mighty Mouse") and the friendship of Gwen Stefani ("I loved being on tour with Gwen, in all honesty it was one of the best times of my life. I was having so much fun. She's such a cool girl."), sometimes the blessing can also be a little bit mixed.
A rebel and an outsider from the day she walked into a pirate radio station on her own and let rip on the air waves, aged 15, if there is one thing Sov was never going to be, then it was a grateful slave to the system – no matter how superficially glittering the prize.
That is not say that when called upon to promote her hugely successful US hit, "Love Me Or Hate Me" or to exercise her sharp North London accent, along with the rest of her exuberant personality and talent, Sov didn't relish getting up on stage in front of over a million faces for an MTV New Years Eve party in Times Square or being suspended over it in a crane for the launch of her single, or any of the other good times which she had while signed to Def Jam.
"They shut down Time Square for my album basically. I flew my mum over. She was speechless."
It's just that after a while, the creative act of performing and writing became lost amongst all the interviews and the phoners, the press calls and the meet and greets, to the extent that Sov was beginning to feel less and less like an artist and more and more like a cog in a wheel; soulless, robotic and not very much fun at all.
"It was all the interviews. So many. Arrgh! Sometimes in a week, I would have to do about a hundred things. Ten TV things in a day, twenty phoners to different parts of the world. It was too much. I hate repeating myself. It really got to me."
A rebel at heart, it wasn't long before Sov turned the cog she had become into something more akin to a spanner.
"I would storm out of things. I wo
A 5 ft 1 pixie with giant passion, ambition and sheer raw talent, if there is one theme running through the magical existence of Lady Sovereign, then it's that of being a fiercely independent creative spirit who, one way or another, was born to be different.
From grasping her unique talent for rolling her tongue around words at the tender age of 13 in the bedroom of her North London council estate, to being signed to Def Jam by Jay Z; from being kicked out of school at fifteen for avoiding class and being told "you're not going to do very well in your GCSEs, anyway", to performing on David Letterman, touring with Gwen Stefani, recording sessions with Pharrell and The Beastie Boys and selling over a million units of her single, "Love Me Or Hate Me"; the story of Sov's charmed life is one of stellar achievement against a backdrop of the most unlikely of circumstances.
"I'm not your average rapper. I've always felt that I'm different to everyone else and I never approach things the way everyone else does. It's without trying. I don't understand it."
Perhaps one way to understand it is to begin with Sov's natural-born flow. Or her amazing all-guns-ablazing voice. Perhaps her steadfast self-belief. Maybe her innate feel for beats. Her refusal to compromise or snugly fit in with the well-oiled machinery of the music industry. Maybe it is simply that rare thing in a world where manufactured reinvention rules; the ability to be nobody else but herself. Or perhaps it's just that music has always been her blood.
"I always remember hearing music. Every genre you could think of. My mum was a punk, then a raver, then it was all house stuff. You couldn't sleep sometimes because music was always blaring out. I'm compulsive when it comes to music. I have to have everything. I have to hear a new song everyday."
Not your average rapper, then. And, off on a first class flight to New York to meet Jay Z and finding herself towering over Times Square in the form of a 60 foot billboard, certainly not your average 23 year old from a North London estate.
But while being different is sometimes a blessing that can win you hundreds and thousands of global fans, the admiration of Jay-Z ("he called me Mighty Mouse") and the friendship of Gwen Stefani ("I loved being on tour with Gwen, in all honesty it was one of the best times of my life. I was having so much fun. She's such a cool girl."), sometimes the blessing can also be a little bit mixed.
A rebel and an outsider from the day she walked into a pirate radio station on her own and let rip on the air waves, aged 15, if there is one thing Sov was never going to be, then it was a grateful slave to the system – no matter how superficially glittering the prize.
That is not say that when called upon to promote her hugely successful US hit, "Love Me Or Hate Me" or to exercise her sharp North London accent, along with the rest of her exuberant personality and talent, Sov didn't relish getting up on stage in front of over a million faces for an MTV New Years Eve party in Times Square or being suspended over it in a crane for the launch of her single, or any of the other good times which she had while signed to Def Jam.
"They shut down Time Square for my album basically. I flew my mum over. She was speechless."
It's just that after a while, the creative act of performing and writing became lost amongst all the interviews and the phoners, the press calls and the meet and greets, to the extent that Sov was beginning to feel less and less like an artist and more and more like a cog in a wheel; soulless, robotic and not very much fun at all.
"It was all the interviews. So many. Arrgh! Sometimes in a week, I would have to do about a hundred things. Ten TV things in a day, twenty phoners to different parts of the world. It was too much. I hate repeating myself. It really got to me."
A rebel at heart, it wasn't long before Sov turned the cog she had become into something more akin to a spanner.
"I would storm out of things. I wo
