Lady Sovereign – Jigsaw
Listening for the first time to Lady Sovereign’s newest album, Jigsaw, is something I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. Now it took me quite a while to decide on how I would approach this review considering the fact that before this I had never heard anything by Lady Sovereign, but really I don’t think that it matters at this point. My initial thought when listening to Jigsaw was that this isn’t rap, this isn’t hip-hop, I’m not even sure you would want to try and classify this as music at all. Now I like to be fair and I do try to be as impartial as possible but this CD is a huge bust in my opinion. Lady Sovereign rarely uses any real rhymes, mostly slant rhymes and choruses. There is only about ten real minutes of actual rapping on the CD; the rest is convoluted and contrived chorus lines mixed with beats that are eccentric to say the least. This CD strikes me more as a dance hall CD or something to that effect. Now for those of you Lady Sovereign fans out there I did listen to this CD several times all the way through, but still there isn’t much substance there. At times she borders on something that this reviewer could stomach but then the chorus kicks in and really this CD is just a waste of time. I feel nauseous after listening to this radical take on hip-hop music. She also comes off very cocky which isn’t uncommon in the world of rap and hip-hop but needless to say it isn’t warranted. I found most of the lyrics as absurd as the beats themselves. In fact, the only decent and polite thing I could think of to say about this CD is whoever mixed it did an alright job. It’s disappointing to hear music from across the pond (as the Brits like to say) that is so far from anything remotely good. There have been so many great music acts to come from the UK, way too many to name here, but this falls short of them all. There is no saving grace on this CD; in fact I got the distinct impression that some music producer over there picked up Lady Sovereign off the streets and put her in a studio and said, “Go!”. I’m not sure where they found her, what they saw in her and why oh why they let her make a CD. I think Lady Sovereign says it best in her own words on the track, “Guitar”: “So i turned off the light, And i tried to rap, But only bullshit left my mind.”
By Max None
