This debut album from Ms. Dynamite won the distinguished Mercury Music Prize for 2002 album of the year in England, beating out the much-hyped rap phenom the Streets and veteran rocker David Bowie. The distinction was well-deserved. Ms. Dynamite cut her teeth as an English garage singer, but here she proves to be an exquisitely transcendent talent who’s surprisingly familiar with the American R&B tradition.

The brisk tempos of dance music are supplanted by buoyant, electronic hip-hop beats, and Dynamite flexes her versatility, fluidly morphing from club-savvy soul singer ( " Afraid 2 Fly " ) to dancehall queen ( " Seed Will Grow " ) to seasoned rhyming b-girl ( " Put Him Out " ). On the opening " Dy-na-mi-tee, " she blends those different approaches into one seductive super style over a sexy island waltz rigged by producer Saalam Remi (the Fugees, Nas). Dynamite’s cultural mash-up eclipses that of, say, Nelly Furtado because her saucy patois is richer in its music and has more social weight. Indeed, almost all these songs encourage some sort of personal empowerment or social accountability, yet the ideas never take precedence over the sway of the groove. You might think that exported hype is still hype, but Ms. Dynamite blows that notion up with a savvy, smart pop masterpiece.