Lady Sovereign

Lady Sov's sophomore album is more personal and less self-consciously bratty than her debut, which was great, but at times strove a little too hard to establish Sov as the Brit version of Eminem. On the title track, she laments lost love and reflects on her own fractured emotional state, while "So Human," produced by the ubiquitous Dr. Luke ("Right Round"), features a sample of the Cure's "Close to Me" and is brash without being obnoxious. In all, Jigsaw reveals a more comfortable but no less audacious Lady Sov.

Before M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" took off, Lady Sovereign was the U.K. gal MC set to blow up
the U.S. — which she did for a minute in 2006 with "Love Me or Hate Me." Her second LP
rewrites her script with amusingly out-of-character club pop and more emo-rap
introspection. But producer Medasyn's beats are uneven, and so is Sov's hood-rat humor:
weak on what should be a layup college-pub rant, inexplicable on a song about... More >