Tag Archives: Speech Therapy

Featured Music Speech Debelle: Mercury In Retrograde

by Rich Thomas
January 20, 2012 - 10:48 am

Take a look at this. It’s a cellphone video of Speech Debelle being announced as the winner of the 2009 Mercury Prize, shot by someone at her table. Their reaction says it all: elation, surprise, shock and awe, really. An underdog in the truest sense of the word, Speech Therapy took home the award for best album by beating out a field that included heavy favorites The Horrors, La Roux, Friendly Fires, and a then-little known artist named Florence and the Machine. It was a massive turning point in the South London rapper’s carer, but not just for the reasons you’d expect. Things got better, but then they got worse. The ensuing journey— documented, analyzed and cut to lacquer—unfolds over the neck-nodding beats and righteous melodies of Freedom Of Speech.

Confessionals, love songs, block party affirmations, sociopolitical rants. All subject matter is in bounds on this album, and each tune is supported with a spot-on blend of live band instrumentation and lab-tested synthesis, courtesy of producer Kwes. And her flow? Undeniable. Speech gels with hectic electric guitar (“The Problem”) as easily as she does with sparse acoustic (“Angel Wings”), and “Studio Back Pack Rap” proves that she’s got one of the most inventive cadences in the game right now.

With the Mercury in her rearview, a new album simmering on the hot plate, and an Olympic-sized accomplishment coming soon—a reinterpreted version of her Speech Therapy single, “Spinnin’,” will be the first official song in the 2012 torch relay—Speech Debelle checks back in with ChinaShop for a State of the Union.

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Music Speech Therapy

by Shop Keeper
August 26, 2009 - 10:17 am

Speech Debelle

There’s a reason that Speech Debelle’s debut album is called “Speech Therapy” and that’s because she speaks straight from the heart, with complete intimacy, as if only addressing one person. As if she expects the record never to be heard.

Perhaps in some way, that’s not an unreasonable assumption. The 25 year old South Londoner has been through the mill both before and since she started working on this set of recordings. The oldest song on here is called “Finish This Album”. It was the tune she first played when she visited Big Dada almost five years ago. Its theme is that she has to hold it together, look after herself and try to get the record done, as if the act of finishing will somehow liberate her from the problems in her life. It’s both intimate and epic, moving back and forth between the personal and political, the mundane and the spiritual. It’s a journey acoss London and a journey across her life thus far. Speech is both young and old beyond her years. At the age of twenty five her fragile voice can make her sound like a teenager, but she’s packed in enough experience to last most people forever.

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