Lady Leshurr Presents

6 9 8 3 5 2 7 8 5 2 9 3 7 1 Melesha O’Garro formerly known by her stage name as Lady Leshurr is a songwriter, singer and producer from Birmingham. She was born on the 15th of December 1988 in Kingshurst, Solihull. Melesha is only 27 years old and is only 5’2 in height; although she is short she still manages to cause mayhem wherever she goes. When she was only 6 years old she decided to start writing poetry and rhymes and then rapped them over reggae songs to her mum on voicemail. In 2011 she won best female at the Official Mixtape Awards, she has currently spent a decade working on her career and is still going. Miss O’Garro was the only one to stick to making music out of all her siblings; she grew up with 1 brother and 2 sisters although across the whole of Birmingham she had 11 brothers and 3 sisters.

She used to frequently go to the local youth centre that was opposite where she lived and when she was there she used to develop her skills behind and in front of the mic, she also learnt how to produce music as well as how to mix songs and also how to sing and dance. She released her first ever mixtape at the age of 14 under the pseudonym ‘Lady L’ with this mixtape she self-produced and self-promoted and also titled the mixtape ‘Needle in a Haystack’, for promoting this mixtape she decided to leave it on buses and handing it out to people in the street ‘I was literally doing anything to get people’s attention’ and then once people had started taking notice of her she began to get asked whether or not she wanted her CD’s to be sold in music stores such as Birmingham’s well known music store Tempest Records which has since closed down.

Miss O’Garro has come from a strict home which is why her father tried his best to push her into a stable career by telling her ‘what’s the point because you’re not going to make it’, ‘you’ll never make it out of Birmingham - nobody ever makes it out of Birmingham’ and to also please her dad she got herself a job as a security guard because she was told that she would be too small for the job as she was only 5ft at the time, although in the end she left her job because ‘music was always on my mind’ but when she left her job she never told her dad that she had stopped working she used to tell him that she was going to work but instead she used to go to the studio. At this time of her life she was making Hip-Hop, it was the type of music that she fell in love with after she saw Eminem’s song ‘My Name Is’ on a cable channel with her mum at the age of 12, she has said that the day she heard that one song she had decided that that’s what she wanted to do, be a rapper like Eminem, she has all of Eminem’s music including his mixtapes, she also had pictures of Eminem all over her wall.

Over the last few years Leshurr’s music has become more connected to grime instead of Hip-Hop. Her music shifted as she began to add her own humour into her songs, which jumps out of her most new releases; which includes amusing asides, rapid and frenzied humiliation, and dramatic illustrations. Some people think that grime is just a London based genre of music but it is actually still going strong in Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham and Leeds, grime is a nationwide movement. In some ways Melesha feels that she doesn’t have a circle of friends not even anyone within the industry but she is anxious to change this, she puts the reason of this to moving down south to London from Birmingham and feeling at that current time that the people in London wouldn’t accept her because they didn’t accept anyone from outside of London very well, although now Miss O’Garro is settled in Stratford, East London and is trying her best to make fit in with the people of London while also selling out shows around the world as well as executing perfect performances at Glastonbury and other festivals and being heard by well-known producer Timbaland. Currently O’Garro is nine mixtapes into her career and is keeping the details of her debut album all secret but has only revealed that she is 70 percent of her way complete with the album and is only sorting out the guest vocals as well as trying to get in contact with one of her inspirations Sister Nancy. The album has been titled ‘Queen of the Scene’ and the word ‘Queen’ is also emblazoned on her merchandise because when she was trying to find herself she didn’t have much confidence but once her confidence started to grow she realised she deserved to be treated like a queen as well as everyone else

One thing that Lady Leshurr has stood by is the refusal to swear or rap about any violence in any of her song; she has said ‘I don’t feel the need to swear. I grew up on one of the most foul-mouthed rappers in the world, but it’s all about mentality and upbringing’ she also gone on to say ‘My mum bought me up really good and I knew rights from wrongs’, Melesha believes in and is adamant that musicians should set good examples to young people, she has mentioned ‘Parents say that they let their kids listen to me, and that makes me feel good. I’ve set out to be a role model’. Miss O’Garro took a year’s break in 2014 from music to give back to the community by helping others in making their careers, she done this by setting up her own rap college called Lady Leshurr’s rap College where she travelled around the country speaking to wannabe MC’s, artists and even poets. One of the things she has noticed ‘Adults can look after themselves, but the youth of today aren’t getting the right guidance that they should be getting from their parents. It’s like they’re just allowed to roam the streets. I’m hearing too many kids talking about sex, at the age where I would be playing football or at the studio, it really gets me upset because I don’t know what the world is going to be in the next five years. We need youth clubs to get the kids off the street and doing something productive. If we had facilities they would turn to that, rather than violence or drugs’.

Giving back to the wider community is one of many important things to Melesha; it’s about something that is very close to home. When she was asked what her favourite track of hers was she answered with Queens Speech 4 because that song gave her global podium and was her first experience of the popular awareness. But getting the phone call from Timbaland, the shout-out from Erykah Badu or the support from Akon but the fact that she was able to use the money she achieved from the song to help her mother. ‘It cured my mum’s life. I got my mum a mortgage because of that. That’s all I ever wanted’.

Being successful to Leshurr isn’t having her face on Billboards and her songs on the radio ‘I went into music to get my mum out of her struggled. I promised her when I was 12 and it took over a decade, but it’s all paid off’. O’Garro has got where she is by refusing to bargain for what she wants and keeping full creative control of what she does. ‘I’m very sensitive and emotional when people try to interfere with my music or vision,’ for her Queen Speech Project she has said that she made the beats by beatboxing into her phone and then after she went to the studio she would take the recordings and work on them, ‘I know how I want the song to be. I think that’s why it became so successful, because it’s all come from me. It’s all organic’.

For her album she has also mentioned that ‘I wanted to bring back fun to the industry. But it’s not all I want to say - not everyone wants to laugh all the time; some people want to connect and feel the pain when they’re hearing songs. That’s what the album is going to prove, that I can do everything.’ Melesha O’Garro formerly known by her stage name as Lady Leshurr is a songwriter, singer and producer from Birmingham. She was born on the 15th of December 1988 in Kingshurst, Solihull. Melesha is only 27 years old and is only 5’2 in height; although she is short she still manages to cause mayhem wherever she goes. When she was only 6 years old she decided to start writing poetry and rhymes and then rapped them over reggae songs to her mum on voicemail. In 2011 she won best female at the Official Mixtape Awards, she has currently spent a decade working on her career and is still going. Miss O’Garro was the only one to stick to making music out of all her siblings; she grew up with 1 brother and 2 sisters although across the whole of Birmingham she had 11 brothers and 3 sisters.

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