Anyone who has ever played darts knows that hitting the bull’s eye is a rare event, and the only thing that can truly better your chances is increasing the number of darts you have to throw. It can become tedious, throw after throw, coming close, but never hitting the mark. Albums are not immune to this scenario, always approaching greatness but never really reaching it. Pint-sized British rapper Lady Sovereign suffers from this phenomenon on her second album, Jigsaw. Most well known for her 2006 sleeper hit, “Love Me or Hate Me,” the Lady fails to recreate the effortless cleverness of her first hit, but it’s not all a drag.
As with many sophomore albums, this rapper experiences an array of emotions throughout the whole affair that creates an atmosphere of ambiguity by the time the whole thing ends. That much is obvious with the first single, “So Human,” a playful ode to bad days, which samples “Close to Me” by The Cure. Its theme of dealing with the curveballs that life throws at us is more than relatable, and the song works because the music serves as a great contrast to the subject matter.
The guitar-driven “Jigsaw” exemplifies the tone of the album best, as Lady Sov asks, “My heart is like a jigsaw puzzle ... / Can you figure it out?” It’s almost jarring to hear the girl who used to proclaim, “Love me or hate me, it’s still an obsession!” Everyone has his or her vulnerable moments, but it seems to come unnaturally for Lady Sov, and that hampers parts of the album, even if the music is strong.
Where the album easily succeeds is when the Lady throws away her concerns about being human and instead boasts about her ability to create music that is like nothing else. When I put the album into my iTunes library, the genre had been set as “Unclassifiable,” and it’s that kind of undeniable cleverness that makes the self-proclaimed “biggest midget in the game” worth a listen.
Songs like “Bang Bang,” “I Got You Dancing” and “Pennies” prove to be the most exciting for their ability to combine the rapper’s trademark humor, rapid-fire rhyming and knack for intricate melodies. “Bang Bang” is a huge electro-tinged number with a huge chorus full of irresistible boasts. On “I Got You Dancing”, Lady Sov borrows Kanye West’s autotune machine from 808s and Heartbreaks to create huge dance floor anthem for techno houses around the country. It might not be the most original song, but somehow Lady Sov makes it sound brand new.
The stand out track, “Pennies,” finds the Lady reuniting with hit-maker Dr. Luke (Katy Perry, Flo Rida) to craft what is on the one hand, a brilliant ode to independence, and on the other, a searing criticism of the record industry. Very few people hold the right to sing about fame and the experiences it brings, but the Lady gets away with it. The production is layered, detailed and as hard as something you might expect to find on the new Nas album, but never overwhelming, allowing the Sov to be the real hero, or villain, depending on your view.
It’s unfortunate then, that once you hear a track that shows how great the album could have been, you are saddled with so many tracks that miss the bull’s eye. Even running at a lightning fast time of 35 minutes, there are times where the album’s end cannot come fast enough.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
