Ms. Dynamite (file)
Photo: Gregg Delman

Ms. Dynamite has been arrested on allegations of assault in a London restaurant.

The British rapper (real name: Niomi McLean-Daley) was arrested and released on bail after turning herself in at a London police station last week on claims that she assaulted an individual at a restaurant in the city's Soho district last month.

A spokesperson for the city's Metropolitan Police Station said that a 23-year-old woman voluntarily turned herself in at a central London police station on Friday following an allegation of assault at a location on Wardour Street September 17.

Dynamite, who was awarded the Mercury Music Prize for her 2002 debut album, A Little Deeper, and has also won two Brit Awards and three MOBOs (Music of Black Origin), is scheduled to return to a central London police station in November.

• Ms. Dynamite

The whole world will love it when Outkast cohort Killer Mike makes that sound as he unleashes his inner Monster and the first single, "AKshon."

Meanwhile, Muggs, best known as the DJ for Cypress Hill, steps away from the tales of drug romps and urban life to take on his own album, Dust, which features understated cameos by Everlast and Amy Trujillo.

Punk band AFI deliver their first major-label release, Sing the Sorrow. The album, co-produced by Butch Vig and Jerry Finn, features driving tracks like "Bleed Black" and "Dancing Through Sunday" as well as lighter fare like "The Great Disappointment."

Folk/punk singer Ani DiFranco releases Evolve, which contains an epic 10-minute song, "Serpentine," while folk/funk artist Ben Harper issues Diamonds on the Inside, which includes the James Brown-like number "Bringing the Funk" and the Bob Marley-inspired tune "With My Own Two Hands."

The first single off of Everclear's Slow Motion Daydream, "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom," is a good gauge of the tone of the rest of the album, which features such songs as "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and "I Want to Die a Beautiful Death."

Finally, Ms. Dynamite from the U.K. releases A Little Deeper, the album featuring the single "Dy-Na-Mi-Tee" as well as other tunes that seamlessly combine her talent for both singing and rhyming, like "Seed Will Grow," "Put Him Out" and "All I Ever." Dyno-mite!

Out Tuesday, March 11:

• 40 Grit - Nothing to Remember (Metal Blade)
• AFI - Sing the Sorrow (DreamWorks)
  Buy Now: Sing the Sorrow (DreamWorks)
• Buju Banton - Friends for Life (VP)
• The Be Good Tanyas - Chinatown (Nettwerk)
• Walter Beasley - Go With the Flow (N-Coded)
• Bettie Serveert - Log 22 (Hidden Agenda/Parasol)
• Blackstreet - Level II (DreamWorks)
  Buy Now: Level II (DreamWorks)
• Bobby Blue Band - Blues at Midnight (Malaco)
• Mira Calix - Skimskitta (Warp/Lex)
• Dennis Chambers - Outbreak (ESC)
• Peter Cincotti - Peter Cincotti (Concord)
• Cooler Kids - All Around the World (DreamWorks)
• Ani DiFranco - Evolve (Righteous Babe)
  Buy Now: Evolve (Righteous Babe)
• DJ Icey - Different Day (Zone/System)
• Dressy Bessy - Little Music (Kindercore)
• Drunk Horse - Adult Situations (Tee Pee)
• Everclear - Slow Motion Daydream (Capitol)
  Buy Now: Slow Motion Daydream (Capitol)
• Fiction Plane - Everything Will Never Be OK (MCA)
• Firesign Theatre - All Things Firesign (Artemis)
• Celso Fonseca - Natural (Six Degrees Travel Series)
• Kenny Garrett - Standard of Language (Warner Bros.)
• Gibson Brothers - Bona Fide (Sugar Hill)
• Ben Harper - Diamonds on the Inside (Virgin)
  Buy Now: Diamonds on the Inside (Virgin)
• Aubrey Haynie - The Bluegrass Fiddle Album (Sugar Hill)
• Vincent Herring - All Too Real (High Note)
• Dave Hole - The Live One (Alligator)
• Jack Ingram - Electric: Extra Volts (Sony)
• Jenifer Jackson - So High (Bar/None)
• Joe Jackson - Volume 4 (Restless/Rykodisc)
• Steve James - Fast Texas (Burnside)
• Killer Mike - Monster (Aquemini/Columbia)
  Buy Now: Monster (Aquemini/Columbia)
• Ute Lemper - But One Day (Decca/Universal Classics)
• Little Hatch - Rock With Me Baby (APO)
• Jeff Lorber - Philly Style (Narada Jazz)
• Lunik - Ahead (Nettwerk America)
• Machine Head - Hellalive (Roadrunner)
• Mad Caddies - Just One More (Fat Wreck Chords)
• Meanest Man Contest - Merit (EFA-CAR)
• The Melvins - 26 Songs (Ipecac)
• Craig Morgan - I Love It (Broken Bow)
• Ms. Dynamite - A Little Deeper (Interscope)
  Read: "Ms. Dynamite To Drop A Little Deeper In March"
  Buy Now: A Little Deeper (Interscope)
• Muggs - Dust (Anti/Epitaph)
• Peter Ostroushko - Coming Down From Red Lodge (Red House)
• Kelly Joe Phelps - Slingshot Professionals (Rykodisc)
• Phillips & Driver - Togetherness (Bar/None)
• The Planets - Classical Graffiti (Angel Classics)
• Nelson Rangell - Look Again (A440)
• Marty Raybon - Full Circle (Doobie Shea)
• Relient K - Two Lefts Don't Make a Right ... But Three Do (Gotee)
• Yves Robert - In Touch (ECM)
• Roomful of Blues - That's Right! (Alligator)
• Sidecar - You're Killing Me (Three Mileage)
• Frank Sinatra - Beginnings and Show Stoppers (Brentwood)
• Jim Snidero - Strings (Milestone)
• Solea - Even Stranger (3 Milege)
• Soulthieves - Microphone in the Sugar Bowl (Soulthieves)
• Super Soul - 40 Acres and a Moog (Metatronix)
• Louise Taylor - Velvet Town (Signature Sounds)
• Turin Brakes - Ether Song (Source/Astralwerks)
• U.S. Bombs - Covert Action (Hellcat)
• Unloco - Becoming I (Maverick)
• Jody Watley - Midnight Lounge (Shinbone Alley/Shanachie)
• Jessica Williams - All Alone (MAXJAZZ)
• Various artists - "Agent Cody Banks" soundtrack (Hip-O)
• Various artists - Bass Busters: Booty Party (Pandisc)
• Various artists - Bass Busters: Techno Bass Jamz (Pandisc)
• Various artists - Celtic Compass (Compass)
• Various artists - Chillout 2003 (Nettwerk)
• Various artists - "The Hunted" soundtrack (Varese Sarabande)
• Various artists - Later (2 CDs, Surge)
• Various artists - "Laurel Canyon" soundtrack (Hollywood)
• Various artists - Projekt: Gothic (Projekt)
• DVD - DJ Quik - "Visualism: The Art of Sound Into Vision" (Image Entertainment)

March 18:

• Allman Brothers Band - Hittin' the Note (Sanctuary)
• Stephen Malkmus - Pig Lib (Matador)
• Various artists - Atticus: Dragging the Lake 2 (USA Side 1 Dummy)

March 25:

• Air - City Reading (Astralwerks)
  Read: "Air Create Soundtrack For 'City,' Plan 10,000 Hz Legend Follow-Up"
• Celine Dion - One Heart (Sony)
• Les Nubians - One Step Forward (Higher Octave)
• Linkin Park - Meteora (Warner Bros.)
  Read: "Linkin Park Expand Meteora's Musical Horizons ... In 40 Minutes Or Less"
  Buy Now: Meteora (Warner Bros.)
• Various artists - Now That's What I Call Music! Vol. 12 (Virgin)

April 1:

• The White Stripes - Elephant (V2)
  Read: "White Stripes To Put Their Best Trunk Forward On April Fool's Day With Elephant"
• Robbie Williams - Escapology (Virgin)
  Buy Now: Escapology (Virgin)

April 8:

• Russell Crowe and 30 Odd Foot of Grunts - Other Ways of Speaking (Artemis)
• Godsmack - Faceless (Universal)
  Read: "Godsmack's Visions Of Spinal Tap, Dio, Worse Prompt A Change"
• Lisa Marie Presley - To Whom It May Concern (Capitol)
• Yo La Tengo - Summer Sun (Matador)

April 15:

• Thicke - Cherry Blue Skies (Interscope)
  Read: "Robin Thicke: Mixing The Beatles, Zeppelin And Hendrix With Jay-Z"

• Ms. Dynamite
• AFI
• Killer Mike
• Ben Harper
• Everclear

Ms. Dynamite
Photo: Interscope

As a young girl growing up in North London, Niomi McClean Daley kept a daily diary of her feelings and experiences. She also wrote poems about her Jamaican family and the neighborhood in which they lived. At the time, she had no public outlet for her private verse, until she discovered U.K. garage, the vehicle that would transform her from Ms. Daley into Ms. Dynamite.

"It was really popular and there were lots of young producers, but there were no female MCs," she said last week. "So people encouraged me to turn my poems into garage lyrics and I would MC over these garage beats."

She almost wound up on the wrong side of the tracks. In 2000, Dynamite started her career with the controversial U.K. two-step dance group So Solid Crew, a 30-odd member ensemble that has gotten in trouble in England for drug and weapon-related offenses. Soon after, while working at pirate radio station RAW FM, Dynamite met producer Richard Forbes (a.k.a. Sticky) in a London club and he helped focus her dynamic pop approach (see "Ms. Dynamite Says 'Booo!' To Stage Fright, Heads For U.S.").

"He had some really great beats and I brought some lyrics in and it just took the underground by storm," Dynamite said about "Boo!," her first single. "It had a very dance flavor that the garage did not have at that time."

The song paved the way for Dynamite's debut album, A Little Deeper, which came out in Europe in July and was immediately hailed as a musical breakthrough (the record comes out in the U.S. March 11). Straying from electronic-based U.K. garage music she was weaned on, Dynamite explores a variety of pop, R&B and dub styles that sound like Lauryn Hill and Mary J. Blige filtered through the British sensibilities of the Streets.

"I felt that this one is a little deeper than [anything I've done] before," Dynamite said. "I'm talking about all these different things: emotions, where I'm coming from, where I've been, personal experience, things that I think are important. This is me."

When she was working on A Little Deeper, Dynamite was intent on creating a passionate disc that reflected her interests in pop, hip-hop and especially reggae, which is why she worked with Kymani Marley on "Seed Will Grow" and Barrington Levy on the reggae classic "Too Experienced."

"It was really important for me to get reggae artists on there because I love reggae music," Dynamite said. "That's something that I've grown up listening to. My dad is Jamaican. I feel like it's in my blood, it's in my bones, it's part of my heritage."

The first single from A Little Deeper is "It Takes More," about being responsible and positive when confronted with negative influences. It's a recurring theme on an album that opens with a declaration that dynamite is "strictly chemical free." A video for the song was directed by Jake Nava, who in the past has worked with Spice Girls and Tina Turner.

" 'It Takes More' is a song I wrote in relation to the negativity I see as an older sister and as a young person who feels responsible for my actions in terms of how people see me," she said. "I just see a lot of negativity — sex, drugs and violence — and that seems to sell a lot more than positivity, so therefore it's constantly there and young people are growing up in relation to what they see. I don't know whether we are carrying ourselves right and if we are showing the future the right way."

• Ms. Dynamite

• Ms. Dynamite

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Ms. Dynamite Photos

• Ms. Dynamite