We’ve heard about starting them young, but this is ridiculous. Although still only at the relatively tender age of 23, Shareese Renee Ballard (or Res to most of the world) is something of a music veteran, having been singing since she was seven. While we might asume that she was the product of a musical background, this proves not to be exactly the case.

“No, my parents listened to music a lot but they didn’t play any instruments,” she explains. “I went to private Catholic school so they were all about maths and reading and getting into good colleges, all that unimportant stuff. I took voice lessons after school because I used to sing all the time in the car and my mum sent me for lessons.”

Her root into the music world wasn’t particularly conventional either, as she recalls: “At first I was singing Broadway show tunes, like ‘Cabaret’ and ‘Lullaby of Broadway’. When I was 14 I got bored of all that stuff so I went music school where I started to learn classical stuff. That was cool because it was my first time really getting into that sort of music, it was kind of hard at first.”

It might seem a strange trip from operatic arias to the Wu Tang Clan, but it was the journey that Res was to embark on when – while still in her second year studying finance at university – she happened to sing down the phone to an old family friend who was working as an A&R assistant at Epic Records. Some months later, after rejecting Epic and signing for MCA, she found herself in a recording studio with head Wu Gza, singing on his Beneath The Surface album. So, was opera to hip-hop something of a culture shock?

“It was more of a shock because I’d never been into a studio before, and there I was recording an album. When you have people guiding you and helping you out, that’s a good thing, but it was also a shock because I was in college last semester and now I’m not and I won’t have to go back for a while. I have to go back at some point because I only have a year and a half to go and I want to finish.”

The main reason that the world of finance will have to wait awhile is Res’ debut album, How I Do, a wide ranging, kaleidoscope of a record that has been taking the US by storm.

One of How Do I’s key strengths is its lyrics, a collection that takes in deeper issues than many of her contemporaries.

“That was something I knew right from the start, that I wanted lyrics that said something and weren’t just gibberish. If the voice is really good and the music’s really good, then you need good lyrics to make it complete.”

Does she feel that this approach sets her apart from the rest of the r’n’b and hip-hop clans, with their twin obsessions of sex and violence.

“That’s why I don’t think what I do is r’n’b. I’d describe it as alternative music. People are saying that my music is so different from other r’n’b, but isn’t metal music different from r’n’b. They’re not the same.”

Are there any other artists of whatever genre that she’d like to collaborate with? “I would love to work with producers more so than artists, definitely this guy called Nelly Hooper. Artist wise, it would more be for the songwriting side of it than necessarily do a duet. I have to get my own writing skills down first, but I’d definitely like to get some help off someone like Sheryl Crow or maybe someone like Sinéad O’Connor. That would be really cool”.