Jigsaw

When you consider there are people paid extremely well to know what the public wants, is it fair to blame the public when a major-label marketing plan bricks? I suppose we found out with Lady Sovereign's Public Warning, which was given every chance to succeed-- cosigned by Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, and Def Jam itself and extensively profiled in laudatory but ultimately patronizing puff pieces, Lady Sovereign eventually got to #1 at TRL with the Feminem video for "Love Me or Hate Me". A bunch of hard-working street teamers got a totally sweet pizza party for that one.

And yet none of this prevented Sov from becoming a questionable signing-- the Jerome James to Jay-Z's Isiah Thomas-- and the blame game began: Listeners caught in the blog-hype cycle abandoned her quickly after Run the Road once Public Warning was found lacking a new single like "Ch-Ching" or "Random". More nefariously, it was suggested that listeners still weren't willing to accept a white British girl in a milieu that is still predominantly black, American, and male. But then, something funny happened: Lily Allen got really popular. And Santigold. M.I.A., too-- not just in the sub-urban pop realm that Sov was laser-marketed towards, but also among the rap heads her skills were supposed to knock out (if Bun B ever spits flame over "Love Me or Hate Me" you know where to find me). What really happened is something that the abominable Jigsaw could not make more blindingly obvious: Since 2006, Lady Sovereign has been pretty much incapable of making music people might actually want to listen to.

It's not that Jigsaw doesn't try hard enough-- despite being free of Def Jam's expectations, the stench of desperation is so strong that these don't feel like songs so much as contingency plans. As you might have heard, "So Human" is a straight rip of the Cure's "Close to Me", but pales compared to sample-source cousins Ce'Cile's "Rude Bwoy Thug Life" or Robyn's "Konichiwa Bitches". Whatever sense of mental anguish she's looking to convey here gets cancelled out by the piercingly chipper backing track and her laughable rhymes ("runnin' out the studio like Forrest Gump!"). And yet, even if it's Track 2 on Jigsaw, "So Human" is only its second-most annoying song to that point: Remember the Streets' "War of the Sexes"? Trade blow for herb and you've got opener "Let's Be Mates".

On that note, past comparisons to the Streets' Mike Skinner were borne from cultural cliché, but on Jigsaw the prophecy becomes true-- like Skinner's recent work, instead of woodshedding on the mixtape circuit like smarter and hungrier rappers, we're treated to lightweight albums that are three years in the making and still feel like a rushed jumble of bad ideas that just get worse as they go along. I'll spare quoting from the quite literal breakfast-in-bed dare "Food Play" and just say that Paris Hilton didn't make it a hot Carl's Jr. commercial, and Sov doesn't make it a hot song.

We've heard a lot about the dark times Sov went through after Public Warning, but other than vague references to how interview junkets are a pain in the ass, Jigsaw quite literally admits how she's left with nothing but "bullshit" to say about it. So sadly Jigsaw isn't a confident grasp of a lived-in image: Realizing in 2009 that it's more beneficial to one's chances to spit like Maya instead of Marshall, more traditional hip-hop tracks like "Bang Bang" brazenly lift the shanty-town cheerleader cadences of Arular-- "I've got that bang bang sound/ So won't you crank it loud," goes the chorus, an odd request of a record that has roughly zero low end. Similarly, on the Gwen Stefani-scented "I Got You Dancing", Sov promises she'll have you "do it in time to my metaphors." Jigsaw is a record with roughly zero metaphors. However, you do get a healthy selection of failed similes, the most blatant coming on the title track-- "I've got you on my mind/ I've got shit on my mind/ I've got plenty of time to just sit and rewind/ And just sip on my wine." This is why her heart is like a jigsaw puzzle.

I'm not willing to hold out the possibility that nationality is causing Sov's career to stall, not when I heard both "Fix Up, Look Sharp" and "Wearin' My Rolex" at an LA Fitness that rarely plays stuff more leftfield than, say, Bowling For Soup. And I'm not willing to hold out the possibility that as a male critic, I'm unable to relate to the sort of personality she's looking to embody on Jigsaw-- more than ever, there's a vacuum of strong female personalities in hip-hop, and instead of the piss-taking joker we heard years ago that turned Vertically Challenged into a teaser of potential, there's a depressing and shrill neediness that could get Sovereign a bit part in He's Just Not That Into You. The sad part is that might have been Sov's intention all along.