Lady Sovereign

IT'S BEEN QUITE a year for Lady Sovereign. She's met Gordon Brown at Downing Street to discuss hoodies ("he was all right, you know, not too stuck up"). She's auditioned for Jay Z by freestyling in his office while Usher sat in and grinned at her ("I choked up halfway through: they still liked it, though"); she's signed a lucrative deal with the legendary US hip hop label Def Jam; toured the States with Gwen Stefani; and she's even roped in her heroine Missy Elliott to appear on her last single. She's even become an unlikely transatlantic gay icon ("I don't really want to talk about my private life but, you know, it's nice to be a bit of an icon, innit?").