It should be a straightforward question, but for rapper Lady Sovereign a simple "How are you?" requires careful consideration. "I feel ... good." Pause. "Yeah, I'm good. I'm ... " Long pause. "I'm ... happy," she decides.
Louise Harman is just 23, but already she's had quite a life. By the age of 20, she had scored a Top 10 hit with the Ordinary Boys - Nine2Five - and recorded with the Streets. In 2005, she got a deal with Island Records in the UK, while Jay-Z himself signed her to his Def Jam label in the US. She was soon touring America with Gwen Stefani, performing in front of thousands in Times Square. Lady Sovereign, the self-described "street rat from a normal working-class family", had made it. She became, and remains, good friends with Stefani; the two would hang out every night "just bantering", she says. One evening they ended up "chasing each other around a field, drop-kicking each other".
Then things started to fall apart. "I went on strike and stopped doing stuff, so Def Jam got the hump with me," Harman shrugs, sipping on a vodka and Red Bull in a pub in Wembley, north London, near where she grew up. Her initial meeting with Jay-Z took place in front of R&B star Usher and producer LA Reid, and was, she remembers, an uncomfortable experience. "All these executives, on the top floor of a high-rise building, all eyes on me. It was like an audition. Jay-Z is a cool guy, but we only hung out properly once - it's not like we were best friends." Her mother was (and still is) seriously ill with a brain tumour. Meanwhile, Def Jam had spent vast amounts marketing her debut album, Public Warning, and saw little chance of profiting from its 300,000 sales. The pressure was on.
The tipping point was a disastrous performance at New York's Studio B in May 2007. Harman told the audience she was broke and bored of performing the same songs; she left the stage after two tracks to a chorus of boos. "I lost the plot a few times. I was cutting myself and stupid things like that. I was tired," she says now. "I felt like it was just push, push, push. I didn't have a chance to record any new stuff, it was the same old songs."
She flew back home. "My manager rang me and said, 'OK, it's definitely over.' And it hit me." She insists that Def Jam didn't drop her; the parting was a mutual decision. "It just had to be done, for their sake, for my sake. It wasn't messy, it was just ... gone."
She became depressed, and undertook counselling. "I was on anti-depressants for a bit, but that wasn't a good idea." One night, she swallowed "a load" of pills. At 3am, she phoned two friends, who took her to hospital. She was discharged the following day. "It was the lowest I've ever been in my life," she says.
So she took a year off, and spent much of 2007 rekindling old friendships. "When I was in America, I didn't have any real friends, to be honest," she laughs.
In early 2008, she finally felt ready to go back into the studio, and began putting together Jigsaw, her second album. Despite interest from major labels, Harman decided to start her own imprint, Midget Records, which was quickly picked up by EMI. "They offered us an amazing distribution deal. I want to make money, but I want to be happy and I want to be in control," she says. She has been involved in marketing this time round, and put the album together on a fraction of the budget she had for Public Warning, running the label from her father's house in Wembley. "I sit in my murky purple bedroom on my laptop, and go through everything. I put in a lot more work than I used to, because it is my thing now."
The new album mixes honest observations, witty punchlines and a string of potential hits. Harman also debuts her newly discovered singing voice. "I know I'm not the best singer in the world," she says with a grin, "but it shows a different side to me." This time, she is putting aside the bravado to reveal a softer side. The title track is a love song: "It's about an ex. I never thought I'd do a lovey-dovey song, but with age comes experience, so ... "
As we leave the pub to take a look at Harman's old school - she left at 15 - she remarks on how much she has changed over the last 18 months. The ponytail has gone, as has her sometimes acerbic attitude, and she seems - inevitably, perhaps - to have grown into herself. "I'm determined and excited," she says. "This is never going to stop; I'll keep making music, I'll keep doing my own thing. I'm not a one-trick pony".