No press is bad press

If they're not talking about you, then you're not important. Well, Lady Sovereign. Hmm. She was at Silk City. Can't really say she played there. There was a performance. It was in two acts. It was originally scheduled to be a musical but became a play.
For the full breakdown...

We got there at 11 and saw a line around the block. R5 had told everyone to get there at 9 to ensure entry. They stopped selling tickets and kept half for the door. Hundreds anxiously awaited entry as Sov was doing sound checks and was not happy with the setup. Apparently she was nearly in tears and almost ready to shut the show down. They were apparently able to appease her and opened the doors shortly after 11. Thankfully, Mr. G had hoooked me up with tickets and her new EP so I did not have the pleasure of paying for this show after waiting in the cold.

Once inside, Dev79 and Starkey got the crowd hype with grime/garage/2 step (whatever your current choice word is). Finally, Ghislain Poirier came on and had a thoroughly impressive aural adventure through a musical wonderland. Check his site because classifying this is a waste of time. Its just damn good.

Ghislain worked the sardines crowd into a frenzy. Next came DJ Frampster, Lady Sovereign's current DJ. He had some nice garage tracks, dubplates and such. Finally, Sov came out to a ready and waiting crowd. She played "Blah blah blah" and everyone was feeling it except Sov herself. After the track she began on a rant on how she couldn't hear herself in the monitors and she couldn't put on a good show. She asked the crowd if the sound sucked and they replied with a resounding cheer. When they realized that she wasn't going to perform the boos started coming. Chants of bullshit and USA, USA started echoing throughout Silk city. Others were yelling that "this is hip hop" and "Let's drop her off in North Philly". Eventually she threw the mic down and left the stage. Meanwhile this unfortunate girl standing next to me got hit in the head with a beer bottle. She was in serious pain. Yes it was yuengling.

Frampster came back out while they tried to coax her back on stage. After some coaxing, she came back out and sort of tried to do another song but not really. Same thing more complaining about the sound and to cap the night off she pushed over a speaker. She has now become an official rock star. Thank you Jay Z and blogosphere.

In her minor defense, the sound sucked and she was not acting like a primadonna afterwards. She was apologizing and signing autographs, gave away a shirt and was recording some name drops for these dudes outside. Regardless, an extremely poor showing from the newest member of the Carter administration.

Check the Lady Sovereign video. This is from her second stint on stage.

Apparently, a similar evening happenened in Montreal.

The Fader blog has a perfect wrapup of the whole Lady Sovereign situation (from NYC show): '"Sellout!" shouted another comedian on the floor. "Yeh," smirked Sov. "And you bought the ticket."'