Lady Sovereign

Rising from London's Grime scene, Lady Sovereign spits raps about celebrity culture, teenage trouble and life on a council estate with high-pitched venom. Dressed in tracksuits and bling she was ridiculed and dismissed for her surly, chav image, but gained an unlikely fan when Jay-Z called her to New York for an audition. Forced to freestyle in front of him, Usher and LA Reid, Sov was signed to Def Jam Records and billed as Britain's female answer to the cheek and cartoonish bile of Eminem. Fighting back against middle England's vilification of youth culture, she launched the Save The Hoodie campaign and delivered a petition to Downing Street along with a copy of her single Hoodie. Teaming up with indie rockers The Ordinary Boys, her biggest hit came with the UK Number 6 single Nine2Five, while her debut album Public Warning (2006) fared well in the US. Led by the single So Human, sales of second album Jigsaw (2009) were disappointingly low and so she took to the Celebrity Big Brother house in 2010, only to be evicted after 13 days.