Sometimes I Might Be Introvert

Little Simz’ Surprise ‘No Thank You’ Is A Real-Time Reflection Of Coming To Terms With Fame

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Little Simz
Karolina Wielocha

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Whenever British rapper Little Simz felt like dropping the follow-up to her critical and commercial breakthrough, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, she would have had the world’s attention with every pre-album single and Instagram snippet teasing new music. Instead, she went the surprise release route, sneaking up on the music world with the thrilling NO THANK YOU, which sounds vital and fresh on the heels of Simz’s big breakthrough – a real-time reflection of an artist coming to terms with just how popular they are.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, which took home the Mercury Prize on October 18, introduced the wider rap world to the MC born Simbiatu Ajikawo in 1994. That the album exists at all is a bit of a miracle in Simz’s mind. During her acceptance speech, she said, “There was times in the studio I didn’t know if I was gonna finish this record, I was going through all the emotions.” Alongside producer Inflo – celebrated for his work in Sault, among other efforts – Simz pushed that record over the finish line and into the arms of an adoring audience obsessed with her vulnerable, honest examinations of life in the spotlight, and the unending quest to line up ones desires with a life of authenticity. On NO THANK YOU, it’s unclear if she’s squared the image of who she wants to be with the one she presents on record, but she’s more comfortable than ever expressing her discomfort and joys – the highs, lows, and crushing mids of life in the public eye.

A lot of what you need to know about NO THANK YOU goes down in the mesmerizing, down-tempo leaning minimalist headbanger of an opener, “Angel.” Inflo once again handles production, crafting crisp drums and hollowed-out synths that do their best to stay out of Simz’s way. She raps, “I can see how an artist can get tainted, frustrated / They don’t care if your mental is on the brink of somethin’ dark / As long as you’re cuttin’ somebody’s payslip / And sendin’ their kids to private school in a spaceship.” On a purely technical level, Simz is at her sharpest on the project. The quick internal rhyme of “tainted” and “frustrated” emphasizes the claustrophobia she feels as fans, label heads, and everyone in between pesters her to keep churning out music. She then expands the bar outwards, cleverly juxtaposing her career with those that profit off her. It’s worth remembering that it was only earlier this year that Simz postponed a North American tour because it didn’t make sense financially.

But what makes Simz one of the most exciting and daring artists in the rap game is that empathy is one of the chief motivating factors in her songwriting. Take the way she talks about label bosses on “Angel” and juxtapose it with her thoughts on “Broken.” Over a looped melodic sample and hi-hats that hint at chaos but never introduce it, Simz raps, “There’s a reason why the doves will never fly with the crows / Chapters eventually close, your friends will turn into foes / Everybody’s so obsessed with the CEO / She probably got the most troubles that she’ll never disclose.” Simz’ ability to not only show differing perspectives but imbue them with equal urgency is a talent that makes her stand apart from virtually anyone else in the game.

On both Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and NO THANK YOU, Little Simz surfs between joy and pain, trauma and triumph, isolation and community. On the former, she posited these feelings we perceive as negative as a bad thing to qualify. On NO THANK YOU, she owns each moment she encounters, finding positivity when she can, and refusing to apologize when she’s left needing more.

Little Simz Releases New Project “No Thank You”

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In the past six years since releasing Stillness In Wonderland, Little Simz has truly lived up to the potential that everyone saw in her early on. The British rapper made a statement on GREY Area in 2019, cementing her as a generational voice in the UK. Since then, she’s gone on to collect plenty of awards and star in Top Boy before unleashing last year’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert.

Fans might have thought that they would have to wait until 2023 for a new album from Little Simz. She barely released any music this year but last week, she announced that she was coming through with a new body of work.

Today, Simz shared her new album, NO THANK YOU. The 10-song effort has a run-time of nearly 50 minutes without any features credited. However, the project is entirely produced by SAULT’s INFLO. The results speak for themselves as Simz’s lucid flows and penmanship meet the versatile musicality of INFLO’s production. Together, they came through with a buzzer beater for Album of The Year.

As the album dropped, Simz shared a brief statement regarding the project.

“emotion is energy in motion.
honour your truth and feelings.
eradicate fear.
boundaries are important.”

Hopefully, the release of NO THANK YOU leads to a tour in 2022. Press play on Little Simz’s new project and sound off with your thoughts in the comments.

Little Simz May Be At The Start Of Her Own, One-Woman British Invasion

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Little Simz Critics Poll
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

From the epic opening strains of “Introvert,” the introductory track on Little Simz’s sweeping, eclectic new album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, you know you’re in for something special. The album is equal parts fantasy storybook and intimate journal marked all the way through by the London native’s wit and vulnerability. It’s no wonder that it has been so highly regarded, perching neatly near the top of so many publications’ 2021 year-end lists. Her broad-ranging and nigh universal critical acclaim could be the first step toward her gaining and maintaining a toehold on the public’s attention stateside.

Such a feat would put her in rare company; while there have been several British rappers to develop cult followings in the US, few of them ever did so while maintaining such a stark, British outlook on the art form. Going back to the 1980s, rappers like Monie Love and Slick Rick switched up their accents to fit in — you’d hardly know they weren’t from New York’s concrete jungle hearing them rap alongside contemporaries like Queen Latifah and Doug E. Fresh. In the ’90s and 2000s, MF DOOM earned a stranglehold on the city’s underground scene, but again, there were many who were unaware of his origins until his visa issues in 2010.

Hell, even 21 Savage was unaware of his own British citizenship until recently, and his struggles to remain in the country in which he grew up have highlighted this nation’s archaic and byzantine approach to immigration policy. For all intents and purposes, he’s an Atlantan at heart and sounds like it. And while there was a minor grime explosion here in the US, it was largely spearheaded by another immigrant, Drake, who made a point of collaborating with artists like Skepta and Headie One. However, their popularity on their own feels limited to their joint works with artists who already hold a certain degree of social capital.

Simz is different. Her growing popularity on this side of the pond has come organically, without the help of flashy local features, which she has mostly eschewed since her signature 2017 project Stillness In Wonderland, on which the first inklings of her fantastical flourishes began to sprout. 2019’s Grey Area continued in much the same vein, showcasing the Brit’s verbal virtuosity and singular approach to left-of-center production. Unlike many of her countrymen, she seems distinctly disinterested in integrating popular local sounds — there’s no trap and nothing that could be counted as classic boom-bap either.

Nor does she employ the glitchy, sometimes off-putting digital sounds that have distinguished grime and drill, the two main British exports in rap-focused music, although she has dabbled in them from time to time. Instead, the production on SIMBI (it’s her name, see) is organic, pulsing with the living energy of the score from an epic, swords-and-sorcerers film series like Lord Of The Rings or Game Of Thrones. There is that regal-sounding intro, the Blaxploitation big band feel of the soul-baring “I Love You, I Hate You,” the militant funk of “Standing Ovation,” and the moody ballad, “How Did You Get Here.”

She also sticks close to her roots, incorporating West African rhythms into tracks like “Point And Kill” and “Fear No Man.” And despite the similarity of their titles, Simz’s approach to the praise of her gender on “Woman” is a far cry from Doja Cat’s, backed by a slinky beat and loungey instrumentation supported by Cleo Sol’s lilting chorus. Through it all, Simz’s poised flow anchors the wide-ranging production, drawing listeners in with its conspiratorial quiet. Though she rarely raises her voice, she still wields it like a dagger, whirling and flashing in dextrous patterns with the cool of concrete at twilight.

While hip-hop and rock-and-roll are cousins with unsurprisingly similar origins and parallel trajectories over the course of their respective eras of dominance in global pop culture, there’s one area in which they diverge. After rock swept the globe, the US was visited upon by the acts it had inspired, like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, who were met with an equally fervent enthusiasm to the one that brought these acts to our shores seeking their fortunes here. While rap has been met with just as much excitement around the world, that love has rarely been reciprocated by Americans who’ve kept international hip-hop acts at arm’s length.

Ironically, as I write this, the Disney+ streaming service hosts a documentary about The Beatles, their process, and their popularity called The Beatles: Get Back which stitches together close to eight hours of footage of the Liverpool band noodling around and creating some of their beloved works. It’s hard to say whether we’ll be watching a similar show about any British hip-hop acts in 50 years — after all, times, they have a-changed — but right now, Little Simz is at the cusp of starting her own British Invasion, one that could prove to be every bit as fascinating and influential as the original.

Little Simz Confronts Her Father In The Heart-Torn ‘I Love You, I Hate You’ Video

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During the run-up to the release of her new album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, Little Simz released the poignant single, “I Love You, Hate You,” addressing her conflicted feelings about her father. Now, she’s released an equally poignant video for the song, depicting visually the narrative of the growing distance between herself and her dad.

Simz’s album rollout also included videos for “Introvert,” “Woman,” and “Point And Kill” with Obongjayar, and recently announced her 2022 North American tour. You can see the dates for that below.

Aside from releasing the above-mentioned videos, Simz also raised her profile in a few other interesting ways. In August, she made her US television debut on The Tonight Show with a performance of “Woman” and gave a cozy Tiny Desk Concert performance. Most recently, she remixed her 2019 song “Venom” for the Sony/Marvel film of the same name.

05/01/2022 — Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
05/02/2022 — Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile
05/05/2022 — San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
05/11/2022 — Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theater
05/15/2022 — Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s
05/17/2022 — Toronto, ON @ The Axis Club
05/19/2022 — Boston, MA @ The Sinclair
05/21/2022 — Philadelphia, PA @ Foundry
05/23/2022 — Washington, DC @ Union Stage
05/25/2022 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall

Watch Little Simz’s “I Love You, I Hate You” video above.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is out now via Age 101. Listen to it here.

Little Simz’s Impressive ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ Is Hip-Hop High Art

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Little Simz

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

In all the noise and chaos of the rollouts for Drake and Kanye West’s new albums, it might have been easy to miss the release of one of the best albums of the year. That’s a shame, because while one of the more infuriating debates surrounding those albums was their lack of female voices, Little Simz’s new album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert should have been sufficient to satisfy any desire for a feminine presence — ironically, as it gave ample evidence that a woman, by herself, can be enough.

That may have been its goal all along. Simz elucidates the internal world of a woman pursuing her dream of rap stardom in defiance of her own discomfort at the idea of fitting into a world where women aren’t always welcome. She does this by way of narrative skits peppered throughout which highlight the introversion suggested by the album’s title; Simz is no star-chaser or glory hound, prompting one of the characters in the interludes, a character that seems to reflect Simz’s inner voice to question why she’s even here. It’s a question that I think every artist has wrestled with — or at least, one that perhaps they should.

Simz is also not a shrinking violet either. Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is her fourth album, building on the critical acclaim and momentum of her highly-praised 2019 project, Grey Area. On that album, she showed a propensity and a gift for both clear-eyed introspection and sharp observation. Here, she refines those skills, offering broad-ranging commentary and experienced insights on the world’s perceptions of Black women and her own defiant reactions to them.

On songs such as “Woman” featuring Cleo Sol, Simz lists women by nationality and occupation, offering a counterpoint to the often negative stereotypes that exist in the mainstream hip-hop world. In the interlude “Gems,” she details those struggles in conversation with the fairy godmother-esque inner voice (played by Diana, Princess of Wales actress Emma Corrin) both encouraging her and interrogating her doubts. “But understand you’re human,” she advises. “Be proud. Your light will shine in the darkest hour. Pressure makes diamonds.”

“Standing Ovation” continues this line of questioning but adds a boisterous dose of braggadocio, reminding the audience that Little Simz is one of rap’s foremost technicians as well. A beat switch reflects the duality of womanhood, swinging between the extroverted confident delivery of a traditional rapper and the somewhat muted, but never dimmed, introverted calm at the center of the storm. The latter is a swirling, shimmering instrumental breakdown, allowing Simz to pause and reflect on the personal sacrifices it takes to earn the boasts.

Throughout the album, Simz tries on different styles, inhabiting each with a calm confidence born of her hard-won self-possession. On “Point And Kill” she executes afro-pop as assuredly as Nigerian native guest artist Obongjayar, keeping the vibe every bit as strong on “Fear No Man.” Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is a sweeping experiment that operates with an astonishing level of sonic breadth, but it never loses its sense of structure and direction. Simz is completely in control, keeping the melange of sounds and styles from ever feeling as chaotic as Kanye’s Donda or artificial as Drake’s Certified Lover Boy. When she chooses to address complex parental relationships on “I Love You, I Hate You,” it’s with a grace that neither has ever completely mastered.

It’s cozy and cohesive, more revealing than either of the aforementioned, but also much more genuine and honest. Simz is speaking from her experience but speaking for so many women who might feel voiceless in the current context of hip-hop, where spectacle seems to outweigh substance. Don’t get it twisted; Sometimes I Might Be Introvert takes some big swings too, but it never lets go of its message for the sake of an impressive stroke at expanding its sound. Simz has evolved, album by album, into the kind of artist who can push boundaries and remain both relatable and universal at the same time. It’s a balancing act that so many artists could take lessons from as hip-hop pursues its contemporary aspirations at making “high art,” because Simz already is.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is out now via AWAL Digital Limited and AGE 101. Get it here.

Little Simz And Obongjayar Play Bonnie And Clyde In Their Groovy ‘Point And Kill’ Video

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Little Simz’s album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, arrived last night after a months-long rollout. That rollout included videos for “Introvert,” “Woman,” and “I Love You, I Hate You,” as well as her US television debut on The Tonight Show to perform “Woman” and her NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert debut, where she premiered the Afropop-inflected single “Point And Kill featuring London-based Nigerian artist Obongjayar. Today, along with the album, she released a groovy video for “Point And Kill” to accompany the album.

In the video, Simz takes a trip to Nigeria, her parents’ homeland, to tour the countryside, encountering a diverse cast of characters, including weightlifting macho men and church-going aunties. The video culminates in a very stylish club scene, seeing Simz and Obongjayar grooving in a small club full of people dressed in retro-chic ensembles. The overall vibe is very Queen & Slim, especially in the closing scene, which finds Simz and Obongjayar surrounded by armed police officers all pointing their guns at him as she defends him with a machete. The video ends on this ambiguous note, giving viewers plenty to ponder — much like many of Simz’s other videos.

Watch Little Simz’s “Point And Kill” video featuring Obongjayar above. You can catch Simz live at End Of The Road in Dorset this Sunday.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is out now via AWAL Digital Limited. You can check it out here.

Little Simz Makes Her US TV Debut With An Elegant Performance Of ‘Woman’ On ‘Fallon’

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UK rapper Little Simz has been steadily releasing mixtapes and EPs since 2014. She received much critical acclaim for her latest 2019 album Grey Area, and she’s currently gearing up for her next LP. To celebrate, Little Simz took over late-night TV for a performance of her single “Woman” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Illuminated by elegant chandeliers, Little Simz took the stage sporting a fitted suit for her US TV debut. Accompanied by a full band and a trio of backup singers, Little Simz rhythmically delivered her “Woman” lyrics, which describe the qualities of beautiful women across the world. The Cleo Sol-featuring song originally debuted back in May as the second single off her upcoming album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. The rapper has also previewed the effort with the tracks “Introvert,” “I Love You, I Hate You,” and “Rollin Stone.”

Days ahead of her performance, the rapper took to Twitter to thank her fans for all the support they’ve shown her over the years. “Appreciate you riding w me,” she wrote. “some from grey area , some from stillness , some from a curious tale , some from the early early EPs & mixtapes. September we go again.”

Watch Little Simz perform “Woman” on The Tonight Show above.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is out 9/3 via Age 101. Pre-order it here.

Little Simz’s Glitzy “Woman” Video Is An International Celebration Of Femininity

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“Woman,” the second single from British rapper Little Simz’s upcoming album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, finds Simz celebrating femininity in sort of an audio Miss International pageant. Naming locations all over the world from African nations to Brooklyn, New York, she describes the beautiful qualities of each woman in both physical and deeper terms, praising them for having both beauty and brains.

The video follows the theme, with Simz signing seven-figure checks at a banquet attended by beauties in business suits and dancing in silk slips at an elegant mansion pajama party. Simz also bartends at a classy lounge, singing along to Cleo Sol’s dreamy chorus as the women around her boogie to the beat.

Simz first announced the impending release of Sometimes I Might Be Introvert two weeks ago with the release of the video for its lead single “Introvert.” The album will be her first full-length release since 2019’s critically acclaimed Grey Area, a ten-track effort that featured appearances from Jamaican reggae artist Chronixx and Swedish electronic band Little Dragon. In 2020, Simz also released the Drop 6 EP, recording its five songs to help herself shake off the quarantine blues from the coronavirus pandemic.

Watch Little Simz’s “Woman” video above.

Little Simz Announces Her Next Album With The Cathartic ‘Introvert’ Video

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Today, British rapper Little Simz announced that she will soon return with a full-length follow-up to her critically-hailed 2019 album Grey Area. The new album, due on September 3 via Age 101, is titled Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and preceded by lead single “Introvert,” for which Simz also dropped a video today. The song features a boisterous orchestra backing Simz’s poetic lyrics while the video evokes scenes of the past year of social justice struggle, juxtaposed with classical art depicting generations of conflict and cathartic, interpretive dance choreography.

Despite being two years removed from Grey Area, which was praised as one of 2019’s best albums, including in Uproxx’s “Best Hip-Hop Albums Of 2019,” Simz hasn’t been far from the spotlight. In 2020, she released the surprise EP, Drop 6, which she’d recorded throughout the quarantine. She also appeared in a regular role on the reboot of Top Boy, while recent debates about female rappers on Twitter have consistently surfaced her name among the genre’s most innovative and interesting female representatives.

Watch Little Simz’s “Introvert” video above.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is due 9/3. You can pre-save it here. Check out the tracklist and cover below.

Little Simz

1. “Introvert”
2. “Woman” feat. Cleo Sol
3. “Two Worlds Apart”
4. “I Love You, I Hate You”
5. “Little Q Pt 1 (Interlude)”
6. “Little Q Pt 2”
7. “Gems (Interlude)”
8. “Speed”
9. “Standing Ovation”
10. “I See You”
11. “The Rapper That Came to Tea (Interlude)”
12. “Rollin Stone”
13. “Protect My Energy”
14. “Never Make Promises (Interlude)”
15. “Point and Kill” feat. Obongjayar
16. “Fear No Man”
17. “The Garden (Interlude)”
18. “How Did You Get Here”
19. “Miss Understood”