Album number six finds Little Simz “unpacking the fuckery I'm trying to heal through” while reclaiming her identity as an artist, post-Inflo bust-up.
Having first met Dean “Inflo” Cover at Mary’s Youth Club, Simz was also grieving the loss of what she’d believed would be a life-long friendship.
During Angel – which opened her previous, Inflo-produced record, No Thank You (2022) – Simz likened their longstanding creative partnership to arguably Hollywood’s most famous ride or dies: “Flo and I comin’ like De Niro and Scorsese…”
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Fast forward a few years and Simz is currently suing Inflo for unpaid debts to the tune of £1.7 million.
“This person I’ve known my whole life, coming like the devil in disguise” – Thief, Lotus’s vitriolic opener, howls with hurt and hurls accusations: “Your name weren’t poppin’ until I worked with you.” Raw emotion gushes from this cut, autobiographical rhymes revealing much atop dexterous, free-form instrumentation: “Makin’ me feel like I was the guest/ But I paid for that jet” – ouch!
Cradled by sighing strings, Hollow revisits the betrayal: “You told me, ‘Beware of the sharks,’ and then you became one/ What can anyone truly expect from a day one?”
“As I walk this wicked ground/ Keep me away from the Devil’s palm…” – the drum-rich Flood unleashes pure power. Delivered as if she’s divulging secrets, her flow is understated but self-assured here. Self-confessed Missy Elliott fandom shows up fiercely alongside this one’s sinister, playground-taunt breakdown.
It’s not all heaviness and loss, though. The easy, breezy Free – a gleaming, retro-soul highlight – offsets sunshine-daydream hooks with poignant words: “Love is sharing knowledge, there’s so much to gain/ Love is every time I put my pen to the page.”
On the singsongy, Lily Allen-esque Young, Simz over-enunciates to engage faux-posh mode. “I just wanna play my bass here…” – she’s also a bassist supreme, ICYMI.
A scripted sibling phone call of sorts (with Wretch 32 playing the part of Simz’s brother), Blood drip-feeds narrative detail. This standout track’s dramatic dialogue illustrates life-on-tour impacting an artist’s family relationships (“If you want greener grass, you have to water where you are”).
Simz is also a gifted actor (see: Netflix’s Top Boy). In penultimate track Lonely, she documents an identity crisis: “Maybe I’ll do more acting, less rapping/ ‘Cause I don’t even know who I’m meant to be anymore.”
Punk, Afrobeat, samba, jazz – this record is as musically complex as we’ve come to expect from Simz.
“Bet ya never seen a young black woman so fly” – she opens the funkified Lion with ample sass. Later, Simz name-checks one of her heroes: “Understand I’m Lauryn in her prime when you see me” – okay, we’ll allow it. When it comes to cadence adroitness, Simz is streets ahead – a true visionary.
LABEL: AWAL RECORDINGS
RELEASE: OUT NOW
