It's a balmy January evening in Los Angeles. At the El Rey theatre on Wilshire Boulevard the acid bleeps of the Prodigy's 'Out of Space' fade out as Lady Sovereign hobbles on stage, bracing herself against crutches, her arm strapped in a sling.
It was at this art deco theatre in November that the 21-year-old Wembley-born MC, a self-professed 'angry Chihuahua', fled the stage in tears after four songs, her voice muted by a chest infection. The excruciating footage was posted on YouTube for worldwide public consumption and naysayers were quick to carp that she couldn't handle the pressure. Tonight's show is the last stand of a promotional stint for her debut album Public Warning, which came out in the US last October, four months before its British release.
Sov is hot public property. Signed to the era-defining Def Jam label - alongside the likes of Nas and LL Cool J - by rap mogul Jay-Z, she's being pitched as US's hip hop's next big thing. But as she limps about the stage, dressed as always in a Stussy T-shirt and Adidas trainers, you can't help but wonder what breaking America has done to her.
Thirty seconds later, in a Forrest Gump moment, she chucks the crutches aside, lets out a belch and exhorts the 1,000 strong crowd to 'make some fucking noise'. The high-octane show finishes with the twentysomething hipster crowd moshing frantically to 'Public Warning' while Sov, in a punk sneer, commands them to 'all bow down'. ' That,' Sov huffs backstage, elongating the vowel as if addressing a simpleton, 'is what the UK is missing out on.'
It seems improbable, but while her career has stalled in Britain - last single 'Hoodie' was released nearly two years ago and charted at number 44 - Sov has appeared on the Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel shows and featured in the pages of Vanity Fair and People . Her accent is pure young London, and the cultural references she employs in such scatter-gun-style must be lost on most Americans; but just as much as her more MOR peers like Joss Stone, Sov could yet become a bona fide star in America.
The gig aftershow at the hip Mood bar, where Paris Hilton and Mischa Barton can often be spotted, is a slick affair. Sov and her entourage sit in a leather-lined snug, drinking vodka and champagne, good-naturedly listening to persistent fans, including the girl who drunkenly tells her, like a skipping pitched-down record, how much she love, love, loves her music before her manager discreetly intervenes. 'That's why I like it out here,' she reveals later. 'They're not afraid to be enthusiastic, whereas in the UK sometimes they get a bit stubborn and a bit proud.'
Back in Blighty, the girl born Louise Amanda Harman has been the victim of old-fashioned class machinations. She's a regular topic of ridicule on internet forum chavscum.co.uk and has been likened to Little Britain 's Vicky Pollard. Growing up on Wembley's crumbling Chalkhill estate, Sov started MCing seriously after dropping out of school aged 15. 'My favourite line that I've ever written,' she says, 'is, "I'm the uneducated example of intelligence." I think that's genius. Round where I'm from everyone thought I was stupid but I was more about living on my own knowledge and that's better than knowing about four plus four.'
Taking her cue from pirate radio, Sov began to circulate tracks that she'd created with her dad's computer on garage chatrooms. The likes of 'Cha Ching', on which she lets fly that she's got '50 things to say in a cheeky kinda way', appeared on early grime compilation Run the Road and revealed a spitfire flow and an acid wit. Or as she puts it: 'Got kicked out of school due to bunking/ Now look at me, the multi-talented munchkin.' After working with producer Medasyn, she was earmarked as one of the first stars of the emerging grime scene and signed to Universal. When her manager told her that Jay-Z wanted to meet her, she thought he was winding her up.
The punchline: the Def Jam CEO flew her out to his New York headquarters, and, after demanding that she freestyle some verse, praised her as a 'pure entertainer' and welcomed her to the Def Jam family in 2005. Although her sound is largely unchanged, Def Jam - a label that defined the mass-market potential of hip hop in the early Eighties - called in Dr Luke to smooth over several tracks, including 'Love Me or Hate Me'. The producer, who injected pop horsepower into Pink and Kelly Clarkson, ensured that the track, with its 'fuck you' line fuzzed out, had sufficient mass market appeal to soundtrack a $9.5 million national ad campaign for mobile phone giant Verizon.
Music aside, there's an undeniable novelty factor. She's the first female rapper and non-American to be signed to the Def Jam roster, and, as a white, cocky MC, has been somewhat lazily portrayed as the British 'Feminem'. Subverting the diktat that females must conform to the tits'n'hair formula to be a successful pop act, Sov could prove to be the perfect bridge between tween-targeted marionettes like Ashlee Simpson and the scantily clad sexpots battling on hip hop's misogynist frontline.
With the media onside, Public Warning charted at a very respectable 38 in the Billboard 200. Add a 34-date tour supporting Gwen Stefani in April, and the video for 'Love Me or Hate Me' recently topping MTV's popularity show TRL (a first for a British artist), and the signs are good. But she's not a household name yet, and there's plenty of promo work to be getting on with ...
'Not next to the fucking titties,' says Sov, as we take pictures among a group of wardrobe department mannequins the following day.
She's at the studios of CBS television for a performance on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Having been up till 4am this morning, she is subdued and her throat feels like sandpaper. 'Fucking air conditioning,' she explains. Shopping for clothes earlier, Sov recounts, she was stalked by a paparazzo. 'It was great,' she smirks. 'He followed us in the car and I was like, "I need to pretend I can't see him." At least they're aware of who I am.' At this minute, though, she's not in the mood for pictures. 'I don't have fun with photos full stop,' she says, punching an unfortunate mannequin. 'Can we get out of here?'
She later admits with a laugh that she can get stroppy. Not in a diva-like way though, she protests, just when she's denied basic human necessities. At the Letterman show, for example, she was ravenous and wanted to eat her dinner - a plate of eggs - but got called back for a camera rehearsal. 'I smashed the eggs on the floor, stormed off onto the tour bus and smoked about three fags in a row. Everyone is entitled to eat.'
Filming over, her British manager Zak Biddu reminds a knackered Sov about a handful of phone interviews she has to do that evening. Mindful of her weariness, he's cut them back to the bare minimum. Her voice isn't up to it, she says, croaking dramatically. 'I get irate,' she whispers, staring out of the car window dolefully. 'Can I have a fag?'
Her American label is pushing her hard: she estimates that she was in the States for 80 per cent of 2006. She knew it would be hard but the promotional treadmill is testing her nerves. 'It annoys the hell out of me when I've got to answer the same old shit,' she moans. 'I thought people would have the common sense to look up stuff they need to know then ask me the nitty-gritty stuff, 'cause I'll talk about anything.'
That said, over breakfast the next morning, she is friendly company, sitting through an hour of questions with good grace on the balcony of the Grafton hotel. Sov's skittish energy and diminutive 5ft 1in frame give an impression of vulnerability but she has a tomboyish grit. Burping aside, her other bad habit is saying 'dunno' when she 'can't be bothered to think'. She claims to not give a shit what people say about her, but Googles her name every couple of weeks. Sov's unguarded honesty means that the search engine throws up plenty to read.
Most recently she's been dogged by internet rumours about an MC called Jelly Donut. He has a beef with her after she dissed his friend, a Sov fan called Zach Slow, in the San Francisco Chronicle . A rampant self-publicist, Slow raised $10,000 via a viral website to take Sovereign on a no-expense-spared date. Disgruntled at Sov's subsequent comments, Jelly Donut hijacked Sov's San Francisco gig, inciting the crowd to interrupt her set by chanting 'Battle Jelly Donut'. An amateur MC, Jelly Donut's main calling card is that he wears a giant doughnut costume. In the heat of the moment, Sov chucked her drink in his face and spat at him before security muscled in. 'Jay-Z would never battle a doughnut,' she says. 'He's a very sad old man, 28 going on four.'
But still, perhaps because of her ungracious reaction, the incident won't die. An MTV camera crew, shadowing Sov at her LA gig, keep pressing her for a response to the Donut's challenge. She rants about not wanting to give him publicity, but manages, in a five-minute burst, to call him a bastard, a motherfucker and a c**t. Sov's manager asks them not to screen the footage and they reluctantly agree. It's an indicator of Sov's high profile, however, that MTV bosses are on the phone the next morning, trying to change his mind.
Straight after our interview she's flying to Minneapolis to hang out with friends before coming back to London for the UK release of Public Warning this month. She'd consider living in the US, she says, but adds that she's not just focusing on America: 'I want to be big in Japan, Australia and Europe, too.' The album, she knows, is long overdue in Britain: 'I considered it to be finished a year ago. If they think this album's irregular,' she adds, referring to Def Jam, 'the next one's going to be pretty fucked up. I've got so many things to say. They're going to shit themselves.'
Sov intends to shy away from big-name producers in favour of her longtime collaborator Medasyn, her DJ, Frampster, and emerging grime artists such as JME. But although her mind is already on her next LP, she's still got to jump through promotional hoops in Britain which, given her golden girl status in the States, must be a bit of a comedown. Indeed she states that she's 'not appreciated', insisting some of her peers have had an easier ride.
'I'm not hating on her but someone like Lily Allen, just 'cause her dad's famous, doesn't have to work as hard as someone like me.' Worse, she says, indignantly, 'you get some of the media hating people 'cause they're chavish but she's the biggest chav going.'
Despite being aggrieved that it takes success abroad to up her profile in the UK, she's still excited and a little nervous about coming back. 'I'm going to be the same person obviously,' she muses, 'but I'm going there with my head held higher than it was.'
