Within about 30 seconds of meeting L Dot, it becomes clear why she’s so easy to like. Her infectious aura is hard to quantify or explain, “I’m used to being the loud person in the room, the animated person and people gravitate towards this energy that I’m giving off,” she says. When we talk, she’s wearing a black hoody, fittingly emblazoned with her Hoodie SZN logo, the hood up over her head and pulled down to just above her eyebrows. I can probably see about two thirds of her face, and most of that is covered by her smile. So what’s with that other 10% of people? “Sometimes when you are accepted by the masses you get this cold energy from a minority group of people,” she explains, “As I’ve got older, I’m less offended by that, but when I was young it was harder to understand.”

As I speak to L Dot, she is in the midst of Hoodie SZN, her most ambitious project to date. “Throughout the month of December, I’m releasing high quality new music every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, all with visuals” she outlines. That’s thirteen tracks dropping across thirty-one days during the twelfth month of twenty twenty-three. Clearly L Dot isn’t using this holiday season to rest, “I want to be able to show people how versatile I am and give them loads of different things but in a way that’s still a cohesive package.” That is exactly what L Dot has achieved with Hoodie SZN, somehow blending a diverse collection of beats, flows and concepts which illustrate her lyrical dexterity, vocal agility and an ability to change mood as quickly as she can change rhythm and genre. From boom bap era sounds, to high tempo grime and reflective R&B, Hoodie SZN has it all, accompanied by slickly produced social media videos.

L Dot hails from Tottenham, North London. When it comes to musical heritage, few places can compete with Tottenham’s roster of revered residents; from global superstar Adele to soul singer Lemar, grime legends such as Skepta, JME, Wretch 32 and Chip, and drill icons like Abra Cadabra and Headie One. L Dot says growing up in a place so steeped in musical prestige, particularly with regards to rappers, has had a big impact on her craft, “To have these people to be able to say cool, you look like me and you’re from where I’m from, it makes it seem feasible, doable, attainable, achievable.”

L Dot has been immersed in music all her life. She grew up in a musical family, and then spent her school lunchtimes making use of the music department’s studio. She learnt how to use the equipment and recorded songs with her friends, whilst their peers were kicking ball and gossiping in the lunch hall. “We’d be begging the music teacher to let us in the studio for free, we were just broke secondary school kids!” she remembers. Amongst those lunchtime lyricists were Drifty and Chinny, two of L Dot’s long-term friends and collaborators, with whom she combines to form their trio F2D, “Myself and Chinny have always had a little to and fro where if he’s written a verse I’ll be like I need to rewrite mine, then he wants to add a little more pizzazz to his, so we always had that kind of battle of lyricism,” and what about Drifty? “He’s also lethal with the lyrics but he brings a different type of flavour and energy. When you put all that together, it’s a really cool package.”