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Rapper's journey from teenage outcast to award winner
9 Sep 2009
Speech Debelle's lyrics offer an honest and often raw insight into her life experiences.
With poetic skills and an almost retro style, the hip hop artist takes listeners on an acoustic journey through her teenage years.
The south Londoner's debut album Speech Therapy was partly inspired by the time she spent living in hostels after her mother asked her to leave home in her teens.
Delivered in warm tones, the newcomer's direct rhymes lay bare her troubled past through descriptions of simple day-to-day situations.
This is reflected in the lyrics of Searching for example: "2 am in my hostel bed, my eyes them red, my belly aint fed,
"I got butter but I aint got bread and I'm smoking on my last cigarette.
"I aint got creds I can't make calls, got no papers I got no jewels.
"Got debts up to my eyeballs who made these rules, it's a catch 22."
In Bad Boy meanwhile, she evokes a sense of hopelessness as she describes how the star of the track makes "a couple gs selling weed and selling es"
"He's got a dead beat dad, that beats his mum real bad," she continues.
"His mum sits home all day drinking and smoking fags. His mum said he aint s... probably do jail time and that's if he makes it to 25."
Difficult relationships with her own parents are expressed in her songs, declaring "Daddy I think I love you cause I hate you so much that I must love you" in Daddy's Little Girl and "I been from school to kicked out sixth form to kicked out Mums to kicked out doors don't open much" in Live and Learn.
But the 26-year-old performer's words, while painful at times, refer to changes in her life which have now taken her to the position of an award-winning artist.
The album's title track Speech Therapy features the lyrics: "I made some mistakes in my life that I'm not proud of see.
"And I hope that doesn't mean now I'm trying it will be harder for me."
Debelle - real name Corynne Eliot - worked with label-mate (and past Mercury nominee) Roots Manuva, Micachu and Tunng's Mike Lindsay on the album.
Critics likened her style to stars including Lily Allen and Jamie T.
The Mercury judges said of it: "A remarkable new voice in British hip-hop, tough, warm and reflective. Wonderfully supple rhymes and beautifully subtle music."
