Amplified London: Speech Debelle

From the shores of London comes our first Amplified UK episode, Speech Debelle. Post by Gloria Riviera:

‘Spinnin’ was the first single I heard off Speech Therapy by Speech Debelle. I was immediately taken by her upbeat, melodic and altogether sweet fusion of hip-hop, rap and what sounded, to my ear, like just a little bit of pop. So it came as a bit of a shock to be equally enthralled with ‘Searching’ in which she chronicles a time in her life when she debated choosing drugs over food, or ‘Better Days’ – a song in which she deals with the repercussions of being, as she says, too “loose.”

Speech Debelle supposedly came out of nowhere to win the Mercury Prize in 2009, but she’s been writing and recording music for several years. We scheduled an interview for Amplified. I didn’t know whether to expect a press savvy, closed off soul or the smiling Speech of her more upbeat tracks. We were supposed to spend the afternoon with her while she got her hair done (she wears her hair in a modern take on the Up-Do meets Mohawk meets braids, which apparently takes hours to perfect) but her manager called to say she wasn’t feeling well and could we push the interview back. We headed to the gig venue only to wait 2 more hours for Speech to arrive. The whole time my DIVA meter was inching upwards. Finally, a stuffed up, sniffling but still (thankfully) smiling young woman walked onto the stage and started her soundcheck (and her hair looked pretty awesome – especially with her purple Puma tracksuit and matching sneakers.)

I started to get a feel for what Dan talks about when he says he feels geeky next to all the indie musicians he interviews. I wish I had at least worn my converse sneakers. Anyway, we moved Speech around to several different interview locations to try and get away from the very loud soundcheck and she could not have been more accommodating. She was literally guzzling from a cough syrup bottle and drinking water and OJ to try and get her voice up to speed for the show. She would have talked to us for as long as her manager would have allowed, especially after we started musing on where in the world Lauryn Hill is (Lauryn, if you are reading this, Speech would love to work with you and she says that you “broke” her heart by disappearing).

The thing that stood out, apart from just how nice she seemed to be, was that her drive comes through in a second. She is a competitive and determined young woman. There is no reason that at age 19, after being kicked out of her house because she and her mom were not getting along, she should have been half as confident as she was, but she told me she has always known she wanted to do exactly what she is doing today and that one day, she’d damn well be doing it in a big enough way for people to notice. Speech Debelle may be new to a lot of people right now, but she’s always been one hell of success in her own mind and she’ll tell you – this is just the beginning. Oh, and she totally reconciled with her mum and has always been close to her Granny as she calls her, which I think is really sweet. On her IPod that day? Jay Z’s new album. I would tell you what that is (and I sort of pretended that I knew) but the truth is, I don’t. I’m too busy listening to Speech Therapy. And deciding if I can pull off purple puma sneakers.

(Gloria Riviera)