Lele looks like she should be in the cast of Skins, or doing bubblegum pop whilst twirling her blonde hair around her finger, or wearing a spiked bracelet on one arm and a wristband on the other strumming a hot-pink Fender Stratocaster. Instead, she has chosen to occupy an ill-trodden path between her mutual loves of Rancid and the Wu-Tang Clan. Suffice to say, it's not an easy ride.

“When I first started up the Myspace page and started to get asked to gigs, the promoters didn’t even know who I was, acting all high and mighty and rubbish. I used to get mad at them, telling them to just gimme the mic, put my beats on – I’m doing it. You haven’t paid me, I don’t have to be here, but here I am – this is me.” Such behaviour seems remarkably at odds with her waif-like frame and languid, South-London accent. Her grit perhaps finds its roots in the banal yet hyper-ambitious MTV culture she is part-immersed in: “I’m really into American music: Fifty and Slim. Strangely people always cuss me about it, but I also really like the Southern stuff – Chamillionaire and Paul Wall. Obviously Blink 182…” Lele's identification with US gangsta rap can be traced to her self-confessed aversion to the ‘white trash’ that used to populate the Rose Hill Estate in her hometown of Mitchum – a place where no nightlife exists apart from Tiger Tigers and All Bar Ones. “Bars for the nine-to-five weekend warriors - I’m more of a go out whenever person, really. Maybe Wednesdays. ”

I ask about her publicised comparisons to Lily Allen and if it annoys her – her track Juice certainly has the ska-ry bounce that made Allen’s LDN such a commercial hit. “Everyone compares me to Lily Allen. It’s the laziest comparison. It just confuses me really. I reckon the closest similarity is that we’re both female. I wrote and recorded Juice when I was 17, before Lily had even emerged.” Lele pokes fun at the current wave of condescension towards the emo community in her video Uhh-Ooh, by simulating a bathtub suicide attempt and tearing her hair out over what turns out to be a shopping list. “Everyone has a bit of emo in them. For me, it’s cool to be that open with yourself, that experimental.”

The more you talk to her, the more Lele (SPEAKS) seems an apt moniker – like she knows exactly what you might think of her, and that she knows that she’s going to do her own thing anyway. “I’m so excited about my new material: lyrically, flow-wise I’ve gotten a lot better. It’s just been so long since I’ve had new stuff out – the last time I was in the studio was a year ago. I write all the time. I’ve got stacks of lyrics – so thank god [SuperVision] came around‘cos it was getting to the stage where I couldn’t afford studio time anymore!”

More from Lele here.