Her first performance saw her impersonating rapper Da Brat at a school talent show, and she used to aspire to be a "hip-hop Tracy Chapman", but this 26-year-old south London artist has now definitely found her own voice. "I'm just Speech Debelle," she says, accurately describing her style as "acoustic, soulful and emotive". Her debut album, Speech Therapy (released on Big Dada next month), has been four years in the making, and is as vividly intimate lyrically as it is musically. Older songs such as her first single Searching document her time living in a hostel in her early 20s: "2am in my hostel bed/ My eyes them red, my belly ain't fed/ I got butter but I ain't got bread, and I'm smoking on my last cigarette."
Guests on the record include Roots Manuva ("I feel like a proud father to her") and Mike Lindsay from Tunng. She might not shout the loudest, but expect to hear much more.
