Now with her follow-up, Jigsaw, officially out in a couple of months, Lady Sovereign slid out another single from the album this week.

This one's called "So Human".

It's based around The Cure's timelessly toy-like "Close To Me" and, much more than the "I Got You Dancing" single last time, it seems to support the claims that the album will largely be a way for Lady Sovereign to shake off the personal shit of hers of the last few years.

Does it work?

The song has a much more different approach than Sovereign's usual fare — simpler and more vibrant thanks to the sample, with a sense of pop instead of aggressive, feminine grime. She also sings, possibly for the first time, and we're happy to hear she's supposed to do more on the LP. It's a little treat after the no-surprises of "I Got You Dancing".

Some quite good lyrics, too. Sovereign works around The Cure chorus in a clever way and it's disarming how she reveals her painted-in-a-corner problems of her sudden North American popularity.

"Trapped in the U.S. my accent is my giveaway / I need a bag of green to make you go away / and this is another day of my life and so I say I've been waiting hours for this / I've made myself so sick / I wish to stay and sleep today."

The energy feels a little too thin, unfortunately, and the sample too obvious in the end. Her recent take on fame doesn't seem as interesting or effective as, say, The Streets' "When You Wasn't Famous" or Lily Allen's "The Fear" before it. It's missing something.

To be fair, there's a long tradition of sample co-opting in hip-hop, which Sovereign follows here. There's also an obvious tradition to creatively react to a previous Faustian breakthrough success, but after her 2006 Def Jam deal, her appearance on MTV's "Total Request Live", and her subsequent physical and suicidal collapse half-way through her last U.S. tour, Sovereign deserves to say something about it more than most.

April's Jigsaw comes out on her own independent label, Midget Records, and it's actually more promising and — while we don't mean it in a back-handed way — reassuring to hear about this than either of these early singles.

Hope she can pull it off.