Just because So Solid Crew are paranoid, it doesn't mean someone isn't after them. Since the 30-odd-strong UK garage cartel emerged from Battersea in south London two years ago, they have made more appearances on news pages than music ones. It sometimes seems that certain tabloids would happily blame them for everything from the dodgy Iraq weapons dossier to Tim Henman's early exit from Wimbledon. But even their stoutest defenders couldn't deny that the build-up to the solo debut of Lisa Maffia, the collective's most popular member, has been eventful.
On April 21, one day before the release of her debut single, Maffia was due to play a PA at the London club Turnmills. A gunfight broke out between two groups of men, and in the ensuing car chase 26-year-old Jason Fearon was shot dead. Maffia, who had cancelled the PA due to illness, wasn't at Turnmills that night. It was at her home, however, that the police arrested 22-year-old Clint Ponton, who works for So Solid promoters North Star, on May 15 in connection with the shooting. He is now out on bail and denies the charges.
A month later Jason "G-Man" Phillips, a So Solid member and Maffia's former fiance, was sentenced to four years for fleeing a suspected drug deal with a loaded gun. Then, on July 7, rapper Dizzee Rascal, real name Dylan Mills, was stabbed in UK garage mecca Ayia Napa. It's rumoured that Mills, who had a long-running feud with So Solid Crew, had prompted the assault by pinching Maffia's backside. If true, it's a faint but worrying echo of the enmity stemming from Tupac Shakur's alleged affair with Faith Evans, wife of rival rapper Biggie Smalls, which resulted in the deaths of both men.
Like a bling-bling Typhoid Mary, however, Maffia has so far emerged untouched. Her two singles to date, All Over and In Love, have gone into the top 10 and interviewers have been overwhelmingly sympathetic. By all accounts she is charming, friendly and an excellent mother to six-year-old Chelsea. As far as we know, she hasn't done anything wrong, even though a lot of wrong things have been done when she has been in the vicinity. She's the Teflon MC.
As such, she has a role to play. Swiss, one of four So Solid producers on the album, opens First Lady with a grandiose panegyric to his leading lady that features the telling line: "The aftermath of the press killing us will be a difficult test." Maffia has become the likable, photogenic ambassador for a crew that are looking anything but solid.
This consideration presumably explains her attempts at tackling social issues. If only she and her accompanying rappers paid them more than lip service. City Life explicitly links gun violence with lust for money, which is all well and good - but when it shares disc space with All Over's eulogies to Christian Dior, Gucci and "ten 0s in my bank account", it doesn't take Kim Howells to spot the contradiction. Swiss displays an even more tenuous grasp of politics when he claims that Maffia is "precious like jewellery from Africa the motherland". No doubt African diamond miners will be touched by this selfless gesture of solidarity from the UK garage community.
Most of the clangers on First Lady aren't dropped by Maffia herself. Other, lesser So Solid Crew voices are all over this record. JD Interlude offers the wit and wisdom of producer JD, who chuckles nervously and acknowledges, "I don't know what the hell to say," in the manner of a particularly excruciating best man's speech. So Solid Party, self-aggrandising and oafishly elitist ("If your name's not down you're not coming in"), is little more than an extended jingle.
However, if moronic bravado were enough to sink a record, Dr Dre for one would be panhandling for change right now. This kind of album stands or falls on its beats, and here, So Solid's studio wizards create vivid transatlantic pop that is midway between UK garage's bump'n'squelch and US R&B's hook-heavy drama. Though they can't match Dizzee Rascal or the Streets for ingenuity, they provide several tracks, from All Over and its operatic chants to the low-end lurch of Down, that are viscerally exciting and irresistibly commercial.
Similarly, Maffia is most lyrically successful when she sticks to Beyoncé-approved R&B territory. Women of the World is a spirited feminist manifesto (albeit one written in crayon), and Life is an unflinching demolition of Chelsea's no-goodnik father set to a riff like a squeaking door.
Yet First Lady remains fundamentally botched. It is Maffia's music, not her personal life, that is up for critique here - but in the self-referential world of rap and R&B, the two are inextricably entwined. Maffia should have either played dumb with an uncontentious pop effort or, better still, taken some tips from Ms Dynamite and mounted a serious defence of a musical culture that is fast becoming a convenient punching bag every time a gun is fired in an inner-city area. Maffia nods to both but achieves neither. The pressing questions that dog So Solid Crew, its "first lady" and garage in general remain unanswered.