Lady Leshurr

We said it before and we will say it again: Alexander Wang, who celebrated his 10th anniversary this evening with a bold, in-your-face Spring 2016 show that spoke directly to his cool kid sensibilities, is a musical harbinger for the fashion world.

Soon after the lights went up on the runway, out from the speakers rumbled the voracious lyrics of underground hip-hop star Lady Leshurr. Née Melesha O’Garro, the 26-year-old British rapper possesses a streetwise personal style to match the collection, and her hit single “Queen’s Speech 3” was a fitting soundtrack to the clothes.

While not an American household name just yet, Leshurr has been a favorite around the Vogue offices for weeks now, and we reckon, is destined for music and fashion stardom too. - Vogue

In case you missed it British rapper Lady Leshurr was the soundtrack to the Alexander Wang show in New York last week. And now, today, she has performed LIVE at the Henry Holland SS16 show in London.

We’ve been huge fans of LL at ELLE for a while but in case you’re a newbie to her music here’s three things you need to know:

1. Her real names is in fact Melesha O'Garrom.

2. She’s originally from Birmingham.

3. She has the lyrical skills of Nicki Minaj, and a voice that will floor you.

Watch this space, we expect this girl to be huge. - Elle UK

While grime has been getting international attention this year like never before, Birmingham MC Lady Leshurr is long overdue her own moment in the spotlight—but her new freestyle, which has amassed over a million views in 10 days, might just be her tipping point. "Queen's Speech 4" is the latest in a monthly Youtube series that sees Leshurr spin headlines into punchlines. I've got a dark-skinned friend that looks like Rachel Dolezal, and I've got a light-skinned friend that looks like Rachel Dolezal she muses, before delivering a fatal blow with the line: Got one eye on your man, Fetty Wap. Basically, every word of this freestyle is a gem, and you should just hurry up and click play if you haven't already. Download "Queen's Speech 4" here (while you're at it, get Lady Leshurr's *fire emoji* "Feeling Myself" remix here), and join us as we wait on the edges of our seats for "Queen's Speech 5." - Fader

A few months back, Lady Leshurr turned down a deal with Atlantic Records in the US because she didn't like the way it was pitched. "They said, 'Nicki Minaj is your competition and we will blow her out of the water'," she recalls. The only way to promote female rappers is to pit them against each other, she complains: "It pushes the gaps between us – girl rappers are afraid to work together because we get fixed in these imaginary competitions. The industry just doesn't know what to do with women."

The decision to turn the offer down didn't harm the Birmingham-based Leshurr (Melesha O'Garro), whose name throbs like a belisha beacon in the world of UK grime and beyond. Her new single, Blazin', has gone to No 1 on the MTV Base chart, knocking out Justin Timberlake. She's clutching a pina colada and directing an oversized suitcase in an awkward slalom round the chairs of a Caribbean restaurant in north London. She's just got back from a hip-hop festival in Vietnam, where acts were vetted by the government in advance of their performances for the amount of flesh they were showing. That wasn't a problem for Leshurr – "From day one, I've always had clothes on," she says, and she has her own label, designing the kind of sleek, wetsuitish cuts she favours today.

Born in Solihull to Caribbean parents (she's now 24), O'Garro started in poetry but turned to music to reach a wider audience, and has guested on tracks by Tinie Tempah, and Bashy and performed with Wiley. She credits her success to her YouTube parody of Chris Brown's 2011 song Look at Me Now, where she overlaid the original track with perfect mimicry of Busta Rhymes's spitting, replacing all the words to the song, syllable by syllable. The song's gambit, "I don't see how you can hate on a little girl, I look 12 years old", is a gag about her diminutive size, and a message to any UK grime fans who think "doing American beats" is cheap. She provides a window on that world with all its strange internal snobberies. But like London grime artist George the Poet, with whom she shares a bill at the Tate's Hyperlink festival in London next weekend, she identifies Eminem as her first and biggest inspiration; then she moved on to Lil Wayne and Ms Dynamite, among many others.

How come there haven't been any UK female rappers as high profile as Dynamite in years, I ask her, despite the fact we're supposed to be in a "golden age" of girl rap? "I don't know," she says, "but I want one so much I don't even care if it's not me." - The Guardian

Earlier this year, we put you onto some of the dopest dames on the mic from the UK. Back once again, Lady Leshurr just dropped her fourth installment of the “Queen’s Speech” series. Never a simp on the mic, the bad ass Brit murks a beat from Krunchie and Z Dot for three-and-a-half minutes of fire without taking a breath.

Once the grime invasion picks up steam stateside, we can expect to hear Leshurr front and center to represent for the females. While she’s easy on the eyes, it’s the unmatched wordplay and charisma that have earned her a steady following across Europe. Bouncing all over the record, she spits:

“I’ll Queen Latifah and ‘Set It Off’
Then I bounce like a belly flop
Got one eye on your man – Fetty Wap
Yeahhh baby
I’m getting gwop
Watch me like Netflix
You go to the club, but you ain’t got doe for your gas and electric
Dead ting!”

It won’t be long now til her American counterparts are re-gramming her old mixtape covers on IG, pretending to have been down since day one. Do yourself a favor and catch Leshurr’s wave early. - Uproxx