Introducing... Russo - (Lights Are Off mixtape)

We like 25 year-old Brixton lass Russo a lot. You know that awkward intermediary period between Christmas and New Year, when we all get back to the hum and grind of daily life? It's when you're desperate for something exciting to break the monotony of the largely house-bound days, and this year, that came in the form of Russo's brilliant free mixtape Lights Are Off.

The Lights Are Off tape comes as a fast-paced collage of electric intensity that excels because it not only sounds genuine, and well-conceived, but chiefly because it's exciting. Contained on Lights Are Off is not just the makings of an up and coming singer, but a handful of pop hooks so brilliantly good they're positively bursting.

The mixtape is also an impressive address-book of connections; there's guest raps from Scrufizzer (who recently featured on Oh My!'s brilliant Dirty Dancer), Sincere and most notably, Dot Rotten; one of the most hyped new-comers for 2012. Lights Are Off is alive with the buzz of what might come from it, it feels alive with a youthful vigour that's not only fundamentally charming, but feels vital and essentially radio-friendly.

You've Changed Me is a grinding, industrial behemoth - another class vocal dripping over a trembling dubstep backing. As with so much of the tape, the track spits attitude, a fuck-you don't-mess-with-me confidence that is alluring powerful for such a new artist. It's there too in Russo's previous single release Fool: 'You want a woman? Then grow up. Cos being dumb seems your occupation. I'm tired of having relations with a dick-head.' - this is a girl you simply don't mess with.

One of her best tracks, We Believed is a headlong collision between old-skool garage influences and sci-fi robo-vocals. It's a simmering, bubbling cauldron of potential that hints at the star burning bright at the heart of Russo. The fierce carpet-burn rawness of Bad Tonight makes for another highlight, and in its fantastic drum'n'bass Shock One remix format has been garnering frequent Radio 1 airplay.

With the British charts never more receptive to urban sounds than they are at the moment, Russo could very well become this year's Katy B - the perfectly balanced go-between bridging the gap between disparate popular tastes and genres. One thing's for sure - Lights Are Off is exceptionally good.

Russo feat. Dot Rotten - Bad Tonight

First there was Tinchy, then Tinie - the surge of British rap into the mainstream in recent years has represented one of the most invigorating sea changes in chart music of the past decade. What's more, the new wave of artists breaking through from the urban scene doesn't look spent yet, with promising talent like Dot Rotten gunning to make it big in 2012.

What we like most about Dot Rotten is that he isn't afraid to dabble and mix in amongst the poppiest of pop acts - he's already made a number of forays into the charts in 2011 as part of Gary Barlow's Collective and as a featured artist on Cher Lloyd's Dub On The Track. With Polydor-signed Russo on hand to provide the female vocal hooks, Bad Tonight has all the gloss of a thoroughly mainstream, commercial effort - but its edginess is a sure sign of how far that mainstream, once so reviled by hipsters as 'too safe', has gone to incorporate wider influences.

Blending haunting, disembodied, robotic vocal hooks with a trembling dubstep tinged backing, Bad Tonight sounds as malevolent than the ill omen foreboding of its title. And its Dot Rotten that stands at the heart of it, the rock solid foundation from which the rest of the track towers up from. What's so refreshing about the track is that it pushes a more considered, explorative assault on the senses - at its best moments its a bigger, badder, slicker version of Professor Green's Jungle.

As for Dot Rotten himself, he's worked through beef with the likes of Chipmunk and Wiley to emerge as potentially the brightest star of all three. With the latter two encountering a number of recent chart placing woes, the track is primed for Rotten to lay down a blazing trail with Bad Tonight.

Russo's mixtape Lights Are Off - featuring Bad Tonight - is available to download from her site: http://www.russomusic.co.uk/