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The interview: Speech Debelle of the ball

Written by Semper Azeez-Harris
Thursday, 05 November 2009 00:00

If I am being honest, at the beginning of 2009 the name Speech Debelle was about as familiar to me as the top 10 choirs in Wales. It was only the constant pressure from a work colleague to check out this “amazing rapper from London” that eventually made me research her and indeed eventually buy her album Speech Therapy (2009).

On purchasing the album that she describes as a “Tracy Chapman rapping kind of album” I immediately played it in my car while driving to the Isle of Dogs. I was transported into the world of Speech where emotional intensity and light hearted humour run side by side. Rapping like some UK Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes she details her life with all its trials and tribulations “it has been a form of release a form of escapism just writing it and making the album. It was a way really of just venting all those emotions inside of me a way of keeping me sane”.

Listening to the album, you feel like a younger sibling sneaking into an older sister's room to take a look at her very personal diary. From "Daddy's Little Girl" to "Searching" you feel as if you should not be privy to some of these thoughts because they seem so private. But herein lies the appeal with the album and Speech. She opens it up and you can relate. With collaborations coming in the shape of Michau on "Better Days" and the legendary Roots Manuva (who happens to be on the same label) on "Wheels in Motion" the chances of success were always going to be high. The stand out track on the album for me has to be "The Key" with its old skool beat and simple but nevertheless important message of “overstanding” I think I replayed that about three times!

Getting a chance to interview Speech was in truth difficult, "It has been mad busy since the Mercury Awards promoting the album and doing loads of interviews" Interviewing her I am on a tight schedule as she will be boarding the boat in literally half an hour to tour as the Speech Therapy and Big Dada Records machine goes into overdrive. With dates pencilled in for numerous London venues and dates for Zurich, Poland and Munich it seems light years away from her early years writing lyrics and just trying to survive.

In answering why it has taken this time for her to fulfil her potential she is philosophical, “I think that the album and the current success just came about because this was the right time." Indeed it is the right time. UK Music from a hip-hop perspective is rather thin on the ground with female rappers and Speech's appearance on the scene adds some well needed balance. With her style that is so UK it hurts and delivery with poignant words the album certainly deserved the accolades that it received and continues to receive.

It seems strange that after success at the Mercury Awards Speech failed to get a mention at the MOBOs. "The MOBOs had actually pencilled me in but nothing had really been confirmed because I don't think they thought that I would actually win. After I won the Mercury Award, however, even though I was not nominated for anything, they asked me if I would like to take part in some sort of way, but by then I was busy with other stuff," she says. "Congratulations though goes out to all the winners but how Doneo did not win an award this year is beyond me. Dizzee Rascal has had three number one singles this year so as far as I am concerned he should have had at least the best single this year. I think JLS won best single!"

With her next album “I am hoping to drop the album sometime next year” she plans to go for a completely different angle. She adds with a real enthusiasm “Okay I will put it like this, if the first album was a hip-hop Tracy Chapman then this one will be a hip-hop Ray Charles with loads of drums and strings going through the album so it should be big.”

With that she is off boarding the boat to her next tour and the next journey in the world of Debelle. With the Wheels in Motion for the next album I hope we get that same honesty that has made her a success in 2009.

Speech Debelle - The Key