Lady Sovereign
“Public Warning”
(Def Jam)

2 1/2 Stars

The best way to think about Lady Sovereign’s new album “Public Warning” is to think about that game “Telephone.” For those of you who have blocked out your childhood, this is a game where kids whisper a phrase from one end of a line to the other. Things are intelligible enough at first, but before long the message is horribly garbled.

Lady Sovereign’s generic home, the strange and wonderful London-based not-quite-hip-hop music known as Grime, is easy enough to pinpoint. But somewhere in between her North-West London home and Jay-Z’s Def Jam office, the S.O.V. started sounding like Eminem.

It’s a strange comparison to make, but the similarities are all there, from the cartoon pop beat of “9 to 5” (think “The Real Slim Shady”) to the obsessively adolescent humor of “Tango.” Jokes about fake tans are funny to a certain extent, beyond which they are absolutely excruciating.

Sov’s music is even getting Eminem’s kiddy fan club reception. The video for her single “Love Me or Hate Me” managed to climb up to #1 on TRL, and its exaggerated visual jokes are more than a little reminiscent of Marhsall Mathers’ own videos.

This kind of thing is going to have Grime purists throwing themselves in front of trains (freight, not passenger). While it’s a stock reaction for devotees of any genre to accuse those finding crossover success of betraying their roots, but Sov might deserve the complaint.

I say this because she exploits the hell out of the fact that she’s English. In addition to calling out “Go on, I’m English / Try and deport me!” at the end of two verses on “Love Me or Hate Me,” she has an entire song devoted to her foreign-ness, “My England.”

The song is supposed to dispel all the kooky perceptions we Americans have of the English, or something. The only problem is that many of us Americans visit youtube.com, and that means we’ve seen videos of rioting football hooligans. So yea, Sov, we know you guys don’t drink tea with every meal, and we also know your police carry guns rather than truncheons (they’re for shooting the hooligans).

But she doesn’t always leave Grime behind. The genre’s sonic thumbprints–oozing bass, hollowed-out synths, electronic squeaks, and punchy guitar doodles–are all over a few tracks.

The throaty keyboards on “Those Were the Days” are nostalgic and nauseating at the same time, and on “A Little Bit of Shh,” Sov shoehorns her rhymes into an intimidating monotone.

The compact rhymes play to her strengths by letting her vocal percussiveness step forward. On “Random 2,” Sov fires off “Gimme jus’ a minute and I’ll be in your vicinity / My words hurt you just like losin’ your virginity.” Nice line, maybe even good enough to absolve her from already having dropped it in the original “Random” a year ago.

Elsewhere things just get downright weird, mostly in a good way. I swear that “Hoodie” is a bald-faced “Hey Ya” ripoff, and yes it’s a little lame, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be dancing in spite of yourself.

There’s a few different albums on “Public Warning,” and it’s unclear whether Sov will look to sell herself as Grime’s breakout U.S. star or a tiny, female, even more annoying version of Eminem. I hope it’s the former; the last thing we need is another rapper beefing with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

—Reviewer Richard S. Beck can be reached at rbeck@fas.harvard.edu.