Lady Sovereign

Louise Harman, who performs as MC Lady Sovereign and styles herself the "biggest midget in the game," delivers rhymes in a distinctly British voice and manner. A series of singles that highlighted her sharp humor and bold personality atop heavy bass lines quickly generated global attention. Raised in the rough-and-tumble Chalkhill Estate, a public housing project in northwest London, she later acknowledged that daily life there could turn hazardous or bleak; even so, she valued the tight-knit spirit of the neighborhood, and the credibility she gained there would prove essential when grime audiences began to embrace her work.

Drawn to rap through her mother’s Salt-N-Pepa records, Harman started composing her own verses at fourteen and posted stories drawn from Chalkhill life on an online forum for So Solid Crew fans. There she first connected with Frampster, who became her longtime DJ. At sixteen she left school behind and took an acting role in an educational short about an aspiring MC; she persuaded the filmmakers to let her score the project as well. Those early recordings reached producer Medasyn, who paired her with Frost P, Zuz Rock, and Shystie on the 2003 Casual Records 12-inch “The Battle,” a male-MC-versus-female-MC showcase that launched her run of underground hits.

Singles such as “A Little Bit of Shhh!,” “9 to 5,” and “Ch Ching” moved briskly from shops, while Internet-only freestyles like “Tango” and “Cheeky” spread just as widely among grime listeners. Early in 2005 she appeared on the key compilation Run the Road, both alone and alongside the Streets, then gathered earlier tracks for the Vertically Challenged EP on Chocolate Industries. Later that year she met Jay-Z, the hip-hop star and label head, with Usher and L.A. Reid also present; after requesting an impromptu freestyle, Jay-Z offered her a Def Jam deal. The 2006 debut album Public Warning, fronted by the anthemic single “Hoodie,” arrived on that label.