By Sujin Thomas

HOTLY tipped singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss (right) - who goes by the name of Emmy The Great - may have had her debut album leaked on the Internet, but she doesn't mind a bit.

The album, First Love, was released in February after that leak. Instead of getting mad, Moss, 25, actually used the guy who leaked her album to her advantage.

"I befriended the leak. I got him to go around the Internet taking off further leaks," the singer - who will perform a solo acoustic set at Home Club tomorrow - told my paper in a recent phone interview from London, where she is based.

Moss, whose father is British and whose mother is Chinese, grew up in Hong Kong and moved to Britain when she was 12.

"I can speak Cantonese but not with flair," confesses the singer, who uses her dry wit in songs of love and heartbreak (with playfully rude terms interjected here and there).

Her love for music developed before she left Hong Kong just when her interest in boys was piqued.

She said: "They were all into music. And so I was starting to take notice of what kind of music they were into."

That meant immersing herself in the music of bands like The Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer.

"I found other people who liked those bands too and, all of a sudden, all of that work I'd put in, listening to music, had made me cool. So I started developing an interest very quickly," said Moss, who began performing while studying music at London's University of Westminster, with a laugh.

While critics have called her music "anti-folk" for her non-traditional approach to folk music, it can't be denied
that Moss is on the rise.

Since 2004, she has toured extensively on the British music-festival circuit, and can count notable names like Martha Wainwright and Tilly and the Wall as tour buddies.

And if her showbiz name sounds overly self-indulgent, Moss has a perfectly valid explanation.

She said: "It was a stupid nickname from university. I didn't think this band was actually going to take off. I thought I was going to join a real band."

She added: "I didn't think about it at all. You don't change your name halfway through, though."

Take that, P. Diddy. Or Puffy. Or Sean Combs. Or whatever.

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