LADY SOVEREIGN @ Club Soda

By Robin Fisher - The Onomatopoeia Show - 05/02/2009

So I went to the Toronto Comic Art Festival this past weekend.  One of the guests was Kagan Mcleod.  Dude does a wicked comic called 'Infinite Kung Fu' as well as amazingly beautiful pieces for the National Post.  He's also getting well known in rap circles for his ‘History of Rap’ poster.  I purchased the first incarnation in 2003 which had about 80 heads.  The newest version has over 200, but on both sheets, the female rappers are few and far between.  As someone who pays attention to the girlie rappers, I found the whole thing a little disheartening.  There are scads of awesome women rappers, one of them is definitely Lady Sovereign, and no, she wasn't on the poster. 

I got into the Lady three years ago when I heard her rap about girls that wear too much spray on tan ("Tango"). She cracked me up and I was sold.  I never got to see her on her initial Def Jam run, so I was really looking forward to this show.  This was the third show of her tour and I almost missed it.  See. it's been my experience that headlining acts in Montreal don't even start until 11.  The show started at 9 and she had two opening acts, Chester French and Hollywood Holt.  I was very curious about the kind of tour mates she'd invite along so I got there at 10, just in time for.........Lady Sovereign.  Hunh?!  To chants of   “LA-DY!” she burst onto the stage with a female DJ and male drummer, ready and tight. The place was pretty crowded so I was happy to stay in the back.  It was my first time at Club Soda and it was the perfect venue.  Plenty of room to see and boogie. 

Much has been made of her singing versus rapping on the new album (Jigsaw) but it worked well at the show.  Initially when I heard the Cure sample in "So Human", I was like, clever, but I'm so over it now.   I dread hearing that song everywhere this summer.  She certainly has a poppier sound this time around and it’s an interesting evolution.  With her crowd banter you could tell her sense of humour was still intact as she, at one point, began throwing t-shirts into the crowd.  Some call and repeat and her huge gold chain necklace gave it a bizarre old school feel. 

I could hear everything that she was saying, which is rare at any show... three cheers for her sound engineer.  She also gave time to her DJ and drummer, intense scratching and furious drumming ensued.  Her beats were more on the electro side, and her drummer had no trouble keeping it steady.  You'd think the set would be sparse with such a minimal crew but they managed to pull off the full sound of the album and more. There’s been a bit of a broohaha about her dump from Def Jam and subsequent depression, but with her bombastic rendition of "Pennies" and the in your face style of "Love me or Hate me", she proved that the wee cheeky Brit is back.  The most popular song of the night, (as evidenced by crowd response) was "Food Play" though my favourite song of the evening has to be "I Got you Dancing"...and boy did she ever. 

Towards the end of the show it became this explosion of grime speed punk rap.  After listening to the chants of “S-O-V!” she came back out to do two more songs.  Gone were the electro beats and on came the ska/oi bounce rap of "Public Warning".  No – one – was – stationary!

And that was it.  No really, we were all out the door by 11:30.  It was odd, but I guess the Lady wanted to party elsewhere.  The way she brought it, I say she earned it.  I know I wasn't alone in those thoughts as I saw one sweaty smile after another exit and crowd around the merch booth. 

In true comic nerd form my last thought was; who would win in a rap battle, Lady Sovereign or Amanda Blank?  Set that up and there would be no way you could ever ignore the female presence in rap.  Lady Sovereign's show at Club Soda proved that in spades. 

Tune into The Onomatopoeia Show with Robin every Sunday from 3PM to 4PM