When UK rapper Lady Sovereign first busted onto the scene with her debut EP Vertically Challenged in 2005, she promised to be the next big export from England's grime music scene. With her cheeky rhymes and no-holds-barred 'tude, Sov's name was on the tip of everyone's tongue, with rapper (then label CEO) Jay-Z catching wind of the pocket-sized emcee with the squeaky voice and signing her to Def Jam Records to release her debut album. But when that album Public Warning dropped in '06, it didn't quite make her the star that everyone had expected her to become, and following public meltdowns at her shows and spars with concertgoers, Lady Sov was dropped from her label after her album tanked and disappeared from the scene.



It's been three years since Lady Sov put out Public Warning, and the time off has given her some time to regroup and plot her triumphant return to the music scene. Now, Sov is back with her sophomore album Jigsaw, but it isn't quite the triumph that she might have hoped it to be. Released on her own imprint Midget Music through EMI, Jigsaw is as short as the woman behind it, clocking in at only 35 minutes and consisting of only 10 tracks. But where Sov powered Public Warning with grime conformities (read: big beat garage instrumentals, catchy hooks, bratty rhymes), Jigsaw is built on the strength of dense electronic beats that Sov simply doesn't enliven. On top of that, she sticks mostly to singing on this album – pop star she is not – using her childlike voice in ways that simply don't suit her attitude. For that alone, Jigsaw feels like an incomplete puzzle, one with all the right pieces but improperly arranged, making for one disjointed, unsatisfying listen.

Lead single "So Human" is a pretty clear example of what you can expect when you throw on Jigsaw, a tune where Sov singsongs over a tinkering electro beat adaptation of The Cure's "Close to Me." On the tune, she disaffectedly chants over the hyped-up beat, dropping clunker lines like "You should have seen me running out the studio like Forrest Gump" as the synths and drums race underneath her layered vocals. It sounds like the type of song that would be best suited for a pop singer like Rihanna or Britney, someone that doesn't much mess with the beat and instead allows it to envelop their voice. But Lady Sov is too bullish to allow herself to become an accessory to her music, messing with the slick production on tracks like "Pennies" and the chopped-and-screwed-inspired "Food Fight" by lackadaisically sing-talking over it.



Though Jigsaw is often more annoying than anything, there's a few songs that keep this album afloat – and they just so happen to be the tracks where Sov raps instead of singing. On "I Got the Goods," she raps over a low-riding beat, making for one of the spiciest tunes she's ever recorded. Instead of toying with the rhythm and throwing rhymes against it as if she was randomly throwing darts, trying to hit a bulls-eye, she rides the rhythm as if she were doing her best M.I.A. impression. It's that same sense of timing that enlivens fellow rapped cut "I Got You Dancing," the album's second single, where she commands listeners to get busy on the dance floor in that old familiar bratty style. It's here where she shows that she hasn't entirely lost what once made her unique, but on an album so short, it just makes the rest of the album feel awkward and, unfortunately, out-of-character.

No one really knows what happened to Lady Sovereign that made her drastically change between the release of Public Warning and Jigsaw, but it hasn't fared well in her favor. Jigsaw feels like a completely distorted version of what Lady Sovereign once was, with hints of the past peeking through on certain tracks but never entirely coming to the forefront. Sov was much better off as the snarky prankster that told off the haters on her breakout single "Love Me or Hate Me," yet here, she just sounds like she popped in the studio and half-sang her way through the album. She doesn't have us fooled, and it's definitely not the way to go after the foolish way she presented herself to the adoring public. If she even gets another shot at reviving her career, then hopefully she wises up and tries to atone for these missteps. But with Jigsaw as her comeback effort, that future doesn't look like it will be as promising.

out of 10 Kiwis