Only a few female MCs have ever broken through hip-hop's male-dominance. Missy Elliott managed to do it, so did Eve and more recently M.I.A., Lady Sovereign might be next.
The 19-year-old from Wembley, London is the first U.K. grime artist to be signed to Def Jam. As such, Sovereign's looking up to artists like Elliott, who paved the way for women in hip-hop to do whatever they want.
"She's always been doing her own thing," affirms Lady Sovereign. She sings, she raps, she produces, and she's got her own clothing line. I just think she's sick."
But Sovereign also owes a great deal to her parents, who she describes as "proper punks."
"There was always music around me growing up," Sovereign recalls. "My dad listened to punk rock, ska and reggae, and my mom listened to hip-hop and drum 'n' bass, so I picked up on every kind of music."
Because U.K. hip-hop wasn't popular when Sovereign was younger, she first fell in love with the infectious bass-driven beats of two-step garage. But that's not why she started MCing.
"Half of it was boredom, to be honest," Sovereign admits. "I wasn't going to school, I was staying home and that's when I could turn up the music and just try things out. One day I was just sitting there and it was like it just came out. I never tried to do anything. It's like I just got my voice, I got my flow and the confidence came with it."
Sovereign's confidence level is so high that she doesn't need to meticulously rehearse her flow. That would probably just screw everything up.
"I prefer to just go in the studio and do it there because I can just let it out the way the flow comes out," Sovereign says.
While Sovereign's Vertically Challenged EP � with songs like "Random," "Ch-Ching" and "9 To 5" � showcases her cheeky, quick-rhyming style, it's only a prelude to what you'll hear on her Def Jam album.
"The reason for putting that EP out is just to show people, you know, like this is how I started," Sovereign explains. "When the full-length comes out I just want them to see how I've evolved."
The Basement Jaxx-produced single, "Hoodie," is probably the most lyrically tight song on Vertically Challenged. But since Sovereign wrote it to, as she says, "stick up for the hoodie," it's also the most controversial.
"That song is about my fashion sense, what I like, and how people look at me the wrong way. But it's also about what I don't like and how I look at people," Sovereign says.
While hoodies are no big deal in Canada, that's not the case in England. Kids who wear them are labeled and banned from shopping malls. Naturally, the hoodie-wearing Lady Sovereign is a little pissed off about this.
"The hoodie ain't going to come alive overnight and strangle some person," Sovereign argues. "I've always worn a hoodie all my life... I don't care what anyone says, everyone owns a hoodie and they're trying to criminalize it just to make it associated with crime, but that's not the case."
Lady Sovereign's campaign to "save the hoodie," proves that she's one feisty teenager who's not about to let anyone categorize her as just another cliche disaffected youth.
"I don't really care what people say as long as it's not way off the mark," Sovereign says. "I'm just Sovereign. I'm doing what I'm doing... I'm willing to do anything as long as it's different and weird and quirky. That's me."
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