FEATURE:
Sometimes I Might Be Extrovert
Hailing the Extraordinary Power of Queen Little Simz
___________
EARLIER this week…
IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz at the BRIT Awards on 8th February, 2022/PHOTO CREDIT: Gareth Cattermole/Getty
Little Simz not only delivered an incredible performance at the BRIT Awards. She also took away the award for Best New Artist. She took her mum on the stage to collect the award. It showed how down to earth she was! The momentum began long before the BRIT Awards, but Simz’s win elevated her to a new level. People dubbing her a queen and the best artist in the world; someone without peers who was going to be an icon. I cannot disagree with that. I was moved by her powerful live performance at the BRITs, and I could appreciate why her shows and sets have received such great reviews. In the summer, Little Simz headlines the West Holts stage at Glastonbury. There will be a lot more to look forward to when it comes to Little Simz. Looking back, and her 2021 album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, was among the best of the year. Although it is personal and tender throughout, there is so much power and something physical that knocks you back. Almost extroverted in its confidence and impact, Simz is able to blend her disparate sounds and layers into something whole. Her lyrics and poetry is on another plain, whilst her compositions are bigger and bolder than previous work. 2019’s GREY Area was a phenomenal album that many thought would be hard to top. She has surpassed that with her latest album. I reckon Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is the frontrunner when it comes to the Mercury Prize later in the year. She is nominated at the BandLab NME Awards next month. Expect her to make a huge impact there and win some awards!
Looking ahead, there is a mix of expectation and excitement. It is all guns blazing regarding live performances. Simz will not be rushing into another album, though we are likely to see more music this year in some form. What is the point of this feature? I wanted to react to her recent BRITs success and celebrate an artist who is among the best in the world – definitely one of Britain’s greatest and most important voices. Last year saw quite a few interviews and profiles of Little Simz. I reckon we will see quite a few more this year. I want to bring a few in, so that we can discover what went into Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. Also, learning about Little Simz’s childhood and rise shows how far she has come and, as she said at the BRIT Awards, how someone like her – who grew up in a council estate and came from humble origins – can get to a position where they are collecting awards. The Guardian spoke with Simz back in April:
“Simz, full name Simbiatu Ajikawo, doesn’t waste her words. When she talks, she is purposeful, precise, politely withholding. Yet from its overture, her fourth studio album reveals an interior world of cinematic proportions. “I’m definitely not the greatest at opening up,” she says today. But there are two Simz: the one that is by nature reticent and the Simz who wants to show you her universe.
Born and raised in north London, she was a shy performing arts kid who found her voice at St Mary’s Youth Club in Islington. As a teenager, she starred in TV shows on CBBC (Spirit Warriors) and E4 (Youngers), all the while making music and uploading it on SoundCloud and Bandcamp. By 21 she’d written, recorded and released four mixtapes, five EPs and an album (A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons), all on her own label, Age 101 Music. After a brief stint at the University of West London, she decided to pursue music full-time. In 2017, Kendrick Lamar described her as “the illest doing it right now”. In his 2019 headline set at Glastonbury, Stormzy shouted her out as a legend and one of 52 essential British artists coming through. Simz describes that year as the best of her life; she landed a recurring role in the Drake-sanctioned Netflix show Top Boy, and released her third album, Grey Area, to critical acclaim. In 2020, she won an Ivor Novello.
PHOTO CREDIT: Jameela Elfaki/The Observer
About a year ago, Simz was in Los Angeles. She and her producer, Inflo, had recently started work on the new album and she was celebrating turning 26. When she thinks about that last burst of freedom before the pandemic, her mind takes her back to a changing room on the morning of her birthday. “I got a birthday outfit to wear later – a dress and heels, a little bag, a whole situation.” That night, she had dinner at Soho House with some friends who were in town, including Top Boy co-star Micheal Ward and singer-songwriter Jacob Banks. Later, they went clubbing. Then, shortly after, her manager called, panicky, and put her on a flight back to London. “As soon as I got home, I think the next day, lockdown.”
Suddenly, she was home alone, in her own head. “I live by myself,” she says. “I spent the time doing what everyone was doing really, just reflecting.” That period of reflection has led to some of her best work.
“I know that I’m quiet, innit?” she explains. “I’m just very to myself and I didn’t know how to really navigate that, especially coming in this industry where you’re expected to have this extroverted persona all the time.” Unlike many of her colleagues, Simz is notably low-key on Instagram and Twitter. “I wanted to just let people know like, yo, I’m actually this way inclined.” And so the theme of the new album emerged – an excavation of the things Simz would prefer to bury. “It’s me,” she says, “being this introverted person that has all these crazy thoughts and ideas and theories in my head and not always feeling like I’m able to express it if it’s not through my art.”
The 19-track album is an epic, Wizard of Oz-style quest as Simz confronts her fears and counts her blessings. Spoken-word interludes are pit stops that give voice to her inner monologue; in one of them, an anonymous narrator who speaks in a clipped English accent is her Glinda the Good Witch. “Do you want 15 years or 15 minutes? Do not tire yourself out.” This is what the inside of Simz’s head sounds like.
Though she’s best known as a rapper rooted in hip-hop, Simz draws from a kaleidoscope of influences ranging from soul to funk, jazz and grime. When making the album, she studied timeless music – “classic albums” by Nina Simone and Etta James – not so much to borrow their sound, but their structure. When I ask what her Desert Island Discs are, she gets excited and pulls out her phone. “Ooohhh, let me go on my Spotty. Ah, see, look, I was just playing [Nina Simone’s] Baltimore. Probably Etta, At Last. A Love Supreme [by John] Coltrane. Records that any time you put on, you’re just in, it doesn’t feel dated”.
Such a fascinating interview subject, I have had a look online at various interviews from last year and certain ones that stood out. Loud and Quiet chatted with Simz in July. Their headline stated that she has nothing left to prove. As a hugely successful artist, actor, fashion icon and role model, Sometimes I Might Be Introverted showed that she was in her own league - in the process, becoming one of the most striking and mesmeric Hip-Hop artists of her generation:
“There’s no question that S.I.M.B.I. represents another giant leap forward. Begun pre-lockdown in L.A. and finished between September and December of 2020 – at the same time as filming series 4 of Top Boy – it was recorded with her childhood friend Inflo, who also produced Grey Area as well as both of last year’s acclaimed SAULT records. Stylistically, it finds Simz operating on another plane entirely, delivering some of the most impactful bars of her career and a dazzling array of different musical styles.
Backed by a 40-piece orchestra and recorded at Abbey Road, ‘Introvert’ emulates the epicness of Jay-Z-classic The Black Album, while second single ‘Woman’ draws on the warmth of ’70s soul. There’s the cosmic, ’80s funk feel of ‘Protect My Energy’ – influenced by Nigerian singer Steve Monite – and the Afrobeat-inspired Obongjayar collaboration ‘Point and Kill’. ‘Rollin Stone’ finds Simz spitting blistering, grime-inspired bars, before the song climaxes in a haze of pitch-shifted vocals and woozy trap beats. Meanwhile ‘Two Worlds Apart’ repurposes the refrain from ‘The Agony and The Ecstasy’ by Smokey Robinson, which – impressively – is the record’s only sample.
PHOTO CREDIT: Gem Harris for Loud and Quiet
“That was the goal,” Simz says of the record’s vast variety. “It was about trying to make it exist everywhere. Like, you might walk into a restaurant in Nigeria and hear ‘Point and Kill’, and then you might be in Sweden at some low key disco and hear ‘Protect My Energy’. And that’s probably inspired by my live shows. I’ll look out into the audience and see kids on my left that are no older than 18 going crazy and moshing, and then I look to my right and I see a couple that are definitely in their 60s. I love that different generations can co-exist at my shows and enjoy this music, and I want to continue to cater to that. And also I enjoy different types of music.
“I probably won’t make another album like this again and that’s cool, because I can’t do the same thing twice and expect different results. So I’m just tryna push the envelope as much as possible. I want to keep proving to myself that I’m not confined to this box of rap/hip hop/urban whatever. There are different sides to me and I’m just exploring them.”
This idea of self-discovery bleeds into the lyrics, which – as the title implies – finds Simz squaring her successes with her status as an introvert. It’s a theme she addressed on ‘Therapy’ from Grey Area, but on S.I.M.B.I. she drills much deeper, frequently providing further exposition via spoken world interludes voiced by Emma Corrin, who plays Princess Diana in The Crown.
At the end of ‘Introvert’, Corrin consoles in cut-glass tones, explaining, “Your introversion led you here / Intuition protected you along the way / Feelings allowed you to be well balanced / And perspective gave you foresight.” By ‘The Rapper That Came To Tea’ that supportiveness has been flipped on its head, with Corrin condescendingly sneering, “The extroverts like to be entertained and I was told you don’t talk much.” As Simz explains, it was the success of Grey Area that forced her to confront her introversion.
“I’ve always been a quiet kid and then all of a sudden it was all red carpets and people saying, ‘Congratulations’ on this, and, ‘Let’s go out to drinks’. And it was a lot. Because you’re in the public eye or in front of the camera, you’re expected to have this extroverted persona, but actually that’s not me in my day-to-day life. So I just wanted to turn inwards a lot more and speak about things that would probably put me in a more vulnerable space”.
I will leave it in a second. I wanted to give you a taste of Simz’s success and what she was saying in interviews last year. The focus of all this attention and success is the sensational Sometimes I Might Be Introverted. An album that will scoop awards this year; it was one of the best-reviewed of 2021. This is what The Line of Best Fit wrote in their review. They gave it a perfect ten!
“Delivering yet another Album of the Week, Simbiatu Abisola Abiola Ajikawo is continuing her evolution. Spanning 15 epic tracks punctuated by four interludes and only three features (Cleo Sol and Obongjayar, alongside a spoken word contribution from Emma Corrin), Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is a bright example of both authenticity and creativity.
Calling Simz simply a ‘rapper’ would be to ignore the skills and abilities she exudes within art as a whole, including but not limited to: acting, directing, and writing. Granting a window into the true origins of hip-hop music jazz, blues, soul, funk, rock ’n’ roll and gospel, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is a roulette board of sounds and imagery, surprising with every turn. Scored out of an immeasurable imagination, it centres her experiences as an artist with over a decade of experience and knowledge in the music world.
With Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, Little Simz has switched a dial on her TV set, going from black and white to technicolour. While her last outing - 2019’s GREY Area - pictured her in the dark and vulnerable, now we find her in the loudest of yellows holding herself on a wooden throne. Although Simz may represent so much confidence and bravado, the title reminds us that being an introvert and empath are her greatest allies.
Going by the two singles and accompanying visuals premiered in the last few months, Sometimes was always going to be a project bubbling with grand almost shocking musical power - and deliver it does. From the brass to the strings, Simz’s compositions - and production by Inflo - are so mighty that they would make a classical composer blush, and there’s none more powerful than the rallying war cry horns of “Introvert” - Simz’s call to arms.
As Sometimes progresses, while any past work of Little Simz's has been full of fighting talk, it becomes clear that this is an album made to properly showcase her versatility, voice and soul. Talking family, trauma, the industry and her peers, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is tactical, theatrical, and is the product of 100,000 hours spent honing her craft resulting in a body of work with heart, and its head firmly on its shoulders”.
An artist who is getting more love and respect by the year, twenty-seven-year-old Little Simz is going to be in the industry for decades more. Maybe she will mentor other artists and produce for others. Her own work is going to be towering and engrossing. She will take to some huge stages, and I would expect the U.S. to come calling in a big way! Both humble and somehow deified, she is a rare blend of the accessible and the otherworldly. It is scary to think that Little Simz’s best days may still be ahead! When you consider all that has come before and where she is now, that is praise…
OF the highest order!