Ms. Dynamite: Little Deeper

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * )

This album — the debut by 21-year-old rapper-singer Naomi McLean-Daley — emerged as the surprise winner of Britain's Mercury Prize last week. The shock wasn't just that she beat more critically feted rock acts, but that she won over more highly favoured black British nominees like Roots Manuva and Beverley Knight as well as rap act The Streets.

But there's really little surprise to her prize-winning album, unless the marriage of her British garage attitude and production-line American R&B can be thought of as radical. It sure doesn't sound it, especially when it starts to drift into a ballad-induced snooze towards the end of its 15 tracks.

But it's certainly vibrant and stroppy fun up front, whether it's the opening anti-drugs rant, the rousing reggae theme song of Dy-Na-Mi-Tee, its equally shouty, jagged-grooved partner Put Him Out, or the terrific It Takes More (which could be the sound of Nelly Furtado eloping with Che Fu).

And it does help that McLean-Daley comes with a striking, sounds-older-than-she-is singing voice. But really, it's only a promising debut and one which unfortunately swerves a little hard to a sort of generic, mid-Atlantic "urban" approach.

Still, there are signs that Ms. Dynamite has enough firepower to be something other than just the Brits' answer to Alicia Keys or Lauryn Hill.

Label: Polydor