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| by kenn on 12/23/2005 08:55:00 PM |
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Lady Sovereign's Freestyle Made Jay-Z Smile
Source:
When Jay-Z called a meeting with the U.K.'s latest grime star, Lady Sovereign, she thought it was a joke.
"My manager called me and was like, 'Jay-Z really likes your shit and he wants to fly you out and meet you,'" Sovereign recalls. "I thought he was lying, then I found out it was the truth and that basically when I did my first show in New York, he sent some people down there to check it out and they went back and told him good things."
While grime, a distinctly British genre that pairs American hip-hop culture with two-step garage, hasn't taken off in the U.S., Sovereign's rapid-fire freestyle is what clinched her Def Jam deal.
"Jay-Z was talking for a bit and I didn't really know what to say because, you know, it was unexpected," Sovereign explains. "I just went in there and then he was like, 'OK, so spit something out.'
"So then I just spit him some lyrics and, by the end of it, he had this really warming grin on his face like he was just so happy with it."
When Lady Sovereign's full-length album is released next spring, she probably still won't be able to believe that big-shots like Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park will be on it.
"It's just weird how things like this are happening to me," Sovereign says. "It's just so crazy the way things are turning out in Canada and America, because I come out here and I feel like a star."
As a white female rapper, Sovereign is consistently compared to other breakthrough Caucasian acts, and given nicknames like "Sporty Spice's little sister." But she's not letting it bother her.
"It makes me laugh, because I'm white and I'm rapping I'm the female Eminem," Sovereign says. "I'm doing completely different shit to Eminem, completely different shit to Mike Skinner and whoever else is white."
Right now, the only obstacle that Sovereign has to overcome is trying to appease the U.K. and North America simultaneously.
"I would love if Canada and the U.S. were just like an hour away, not seven hours," Sovereign says. "It's like Canada and the U.S. have this arm and they're pulling, and then the U.K.'s got this arm and they're pulling, too."
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