FEATURE:
Merci
The End of 2022 Gift: Little Simz’s Spellbinding NO THANK YOU
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ONE thing you can always rely on…
IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz at Fabrique Club on 5th December, 2022 in Milan, Italy/PHOTO CREDIT: Francesco Prandoni/Getty Images
in the music world is not to predict anything too easily. It is December, so one would assume artists are done releasing albums – or at least the big players and the mainstream acts. You might also feel that the very best music arrives in the spring and summer. Again, jumping to those sort of conclusions might lead to (rather good) disappointment. I wanted to bring up the amazing Islington-born artist Little Simz. She won the Mercury Prize earlier in the year for the towering and monumental Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. That was released in September 2021. Prolific since then, she has released singles and been pretty busy! I am not sure whether she is calling it a project, mixtape or album, but NO THANK YOU came out on 12th December. Not many artists of her calibre and popularity release albums that late in the year. I think most feel you can get more momentum and sales bringing it out earlier in the year. In this case, Simz had been working on the album and clearly had things to say. Not only do we get another arresting, unique and instantly classic chapter from Simz. She has also ended 2022 with a real gift. This year has seen album releases from heavyweights like Beyoncé (RENAISSANCE), Björk (Fossora) and Taylor Swift (Midnights). NO THANK YOU was released on the independent label, Forever Living Originals. I think it is a little more stripped-back than Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. You still get some sweeping moments, but there is a bit more of a loose vibe to this album. Alongside the orchestration, you get songs where Simz is at the front, maybe accompanied by something funky and effectively simple.
I want to bring in a couple of reviews for NO THANK YOU. Annoyingly for many journalists, they had been put out their list declaring the best albums of 2022. Though, that is quite a nice problem to have! Many were revised in the wake of Little Simz’s fifth studio album. With very little fanfare and hype, it is has gained huge accolade because it is heartfelt and insightful. With her heart on sleeve, you get something hugely impressive and personal. One of the most consistent and innovative artists in the world, this end of year gift will be toured next year I am sure. I want to first bring in parts of an interview from a Rolling Stone U.K. from a few months back. Simz (real name Simbiatu ‘Simbi’ Abisola Abiola Ajikawo) was discussing her role in the T.V. series, Top Boy. It is interesting that she had recorded this album but the world was unaware. An excellent actor, I think we will be seeing her in a lot more next year:
“There’s a calm to Ajikawo, noted often in press promoting her last album (and by me, when we first met, in 2019). She sets her mind on something, then moves towards it, without fanfare. You see that in how she gets security to silence this place, in how she asserts herself on the shoot (more on that later). And it’s clear in how she’s stepped into the character of Shelley on Netflix’s Top Boy reboot. She seemed to casually move into acting, having built a career as a rapper for more than a decade. But the real story’s not that simple. As she picks up Rolling Stone UK’s Television Award, is she likely to sit back, satisfied with her accomplishments so far? Not quite.
Before you get any ideas, she won’t be drawn on the plot for the next, and final, season of Top Boy. “This season I was definitely stretched,” she begins. She wanted “to make sure I gave Shelley her due diligence and did everything in my power to make sure she goes out the right way. However, that” — then cuts herself off — “you’ll see it anyway.” All she’ll offer now is a smile. Season two saw single mum Shelley grow even closer to titular top boy, Dushane Hill (played by Ashley Walters). The season closed with a major twist. Something to make people gasp. As much as Ajikawo loved seeing fans online react in real time, she scrunches up her face saying one word: spoilers.
“I’ve always thought,” and she kisses her teeth, “‘Just chill.’ I understand the excitement for it, but let people enjoy it at their pace.” She’d tweeted as much, in March, when the season dropped in full (“lol yo chilllll on the spoilers”). “People wait so long for it, that to go, ‘I’m gonna tell you the end plot’ when it’s just dropped, is a bit…” her voice trails off into nothing. But, she sums up, “That’s the internet.” It’s one of the few times talking about Top Boy when she looks irritated. Back to her zen state, she brushes it off.
Mostly, she enjoys being able to discuss her acting rather than only her music. When I ask how she knew she could act as a child, she stops. “No one’s ever asked me that before. I don’t know!” I prod, offering up stories of my failed attempts to break into acting at a similar age. “I just felt like, ‘Yeah, I can embody different people. I can use my body in different ways, and step outside of both myself and my comfort zone.’ And I actually enjoy it.”
It’s like flexing a different muscle. As Little Simz, she’s in charge. It’s her vision, accelerated by her ideas. She is, after all, a solo artist. She built a career from freestyling as a teen and self-releasing mixtapes to winning awards — she also won a Brit in February — with that singular drive. Being part of a franchise took some getting used to. “It’s like a football team: everyone’s coming together to make this thing work. You’ve got to have trust in your teammates,” she says. Sometimes, when they’re doing press as a cast and she can’t quite come up with the right line, she’ll turn to Walters or Jasmine Jobson (Jaq), as if to say: “Help me out.” She and Walters have clicked since her audition. The prompt? For him to make her laugh. “And he did — that was it. It was super quick and simple,” she says. She remembers them laughing, shooting and re-shooting a sad scene from season two with Marsha Millar (who plays Pat, Dushane’s mum). When she describes the story, it’s so clearly loaded with in-jokes that I barely understand why it was hilarious. But she’s beaming. You had to be there.
PHOTO CREDIT: Kosmas Pavlos
As our time wraps, we rattle through the books and TV we’ve been into lately. Ajikawo reads a lot, pulling out a highlighter to slash across passages she’ll want to signpost to her future self. She’s heavy on reading philosophical self-help at the moment and shouts out M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled. “It felt like it was written for me.” Her partner had recommended it to her, and she only realised she already owned it (with different cover art) once she’d finished it. “His segment on love, and on what the definition of it means — if there is one…” she trails off again, but it stuck with her. Peck described love as, she says, “the act or will to nurture your growth, or someone else’s”. And that resonated. Now, she’s wading through The Way of Zen by Alan Watts — “very difficult book to read. I have to read it in silence,” she says, smiling.
It’s not all philosophy, though. She watches Curb Your Enthusiasm to unwind, and Love Island when it’s on. I recommend she adds Abbott Elementary to the roster, and she sounds excited to give it a try. Before she goes, she mentions she’s got a coffee table book coming out. One filled with photos, art, scribbles from her journals, and interviews — “it’s not my life story, or an autobiography. That’s not the vibe.” She sounds delighted, recalling an interview she did with Dr Karen Joash, “a Black woman who works in the NHS and private healthcare. It’s cool that I can sit down, having conversations with people like her, and actually learn.”
As for the music? Again she won’t be drawn on detail. I ask if she’s writing a new album. “Could be.” A chuckle. “There will be more to come eventually.” But she’s keeping that to herself. “I’m a public figure, in a way, but I’m a private person. I also think people value mystery. You don’t have to share everything, you know? Or you stagger it. I might share stuff that I’m going through now in 20 years,” she says.
Ajikawo refuses to give everything away, to be the type to be very online or a wide-open book. “I give a lot of myself, but I still have some stuff for me. I need to,” she says. That may well be how we ended up in the neutral territory of this restaurant. That’s part of the allure with Little Simz, the artist and actor: unless you’re in her inner circle, you can never really know for sure”.
I will round off with a couple of (the many) positive reviews for NO THANK YOU. This is what Rolling Stone said in their assessment of a latecomer for the best album of 2022:
“LITTLE SIMZ IS like a hood BBC anchor. Her songs come off like quiet but spicy broadcasts, as if she checked in for a soothing afternoon chat if that somehow involves a soul-scorching read. Pleasant but snarky, Simz combines Queens Gambit cordiality with Top Boy aggression to marry well-bred flows to blistering bars. Appropriately, the London-born MC (and skilled actress) flaunts a thespian’s remarkable range: she gives us humor, charisma, and a lot of feels.
Emotion is Simz’s secret weapon. She has a knack for sharing heartfelt tales with marked conviction that settles deep in your sternum. She’s a bona fide technician, no doubt. But the sheer technicality of her rhymes is not at odds with her natural ability to craft poignant songs that make you laugh, cry, and silently rage. On No Thank You, the follow-up to her excellent 2021 breakthrough Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, Simz gives us 10 choice cuts (showcasing her brilliance and breadth) that convey the whole emoji board of riveting emotions.
Those battle-ready bars distinguish “Gorilla,” where Simz, over loping bass and crisp percussion, spits, “I’m cut with a different scissor/From the same cloth as my dear ancestors.” And it’s captivating to hear her effortlessly unpack a couplet that floors you as she skillfully pivots to the next bruising punchline.
But “Broken” is a boon of self-reflection, and it’s arguably Simz’s most powerful song to date. Buoyed by the strains of a choir, Simz describes how racism afflicts her, wasting her time, energy, and agency. “It shouldn’t be a norm to live your life as a tragedy/To live your life in a state of confusion and agony,” she sighs. And you’re reminded that being Black means being in a constant state of rage.
On “No Merci,” Simz kicks caustic bars (“I’m a human landmine/I am not a human being you can gaslight”), indicting lames that want her “stuck up in the matrix.” Meanwhile, “Heart on Fire,” with its blithe hook asserting that “my life is a blessing,” is her stirring manifesto. But the soulful “Sideways” is the obvious standout. Here, Simz embodies snappish warrior energy, confirming her calm sovereignty: “Walkin’ in my light, my shadow is protectin’ me/Never movin’ sideways, I done this shit my way.” We’re forever thankful for Simz’s bold originality”.
Who knows where Little Simz will head next! Someone who seems to just grow more astonishing and talented, it is exciting to see the twenty-eight-year-old put out an album that ranks alongside the best of her career so far. NO THANK YOU underlines what a force she is. This is what The Guardian wrote when sitting down with this staggering work:
“All of this is punchily, powerfully and, occasionally, wittily done. If you’re going to compare the matter of being signed to a major record label to the lot of a slave, you might as well do it with a lyric as sharp as “I refuse to be on a slave ship, give me all my masters and lower your wages”. (It’s worth noting that Simz releases music on her own label, via a distribution company.) That said, there’s no doubt that No Thank You’s impact is vastly potentiated by the work of producer Inflo, who worked on both Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and 2019’s Grey Area, and whose approach to his project Sault – no promotion, no live performances, no interviews, music apparently released as and when he feels like it, even if that means putting out five albums on the same day – seems to reflect the manifesto outlined on Angel: “Fuck rules and everything that’s traditional.” The album feels far more like a direct collaboration than a producer simply coming up with beats for an artist to rap over. Most of the tracks conclude with lengthy instrumental codas, where Simz effectively cedes centre-stage to Inflo’s lushly inventive arrangements, which, with their swirls of choral vocals and swelling strings, nod to the oft-sampled work of both David Axelrod and Charles Stepney without ever seeming like straightforward homage. Nearly half of Silhouette’s six and half minutes is Simz-free, taken up with dramatic orchestration, booming drums and backing singers.
You can see why she feels comfortable stepping aside on an album that bears her name alone: Inflo’s productions are uniformly fantastic. On X, he conjures up a wall of percussion that variously evokes a marching band, west African drumming and rolling breakbeats. Sideways features a head-turning blast of sampled vocals, sped up until it feels harsh. Who Even Cares is beautifully warped soft soul: Simz singing, rather than rapping, her voice subtly but noticeably Auto-Tuned.
It ends on an optimistic note, with Control: a straightforward and rather sweet love song, backed only by piano. Exactly how her career progresses from here is an intriguing question. She’s clearly had enough of doing things the way she did previously. The lyrics to Heart on Fire seem to suggest she feels she became too bound up in the quest for commercial success and its financial rewards: as they progress, her ambitions shift from buying her mum a house to owning 100 pairs of shoes, a list of desires that “never stops growing, and you don’t know even what you do this for”. What that means for the future isn’t really explored: perhaps she intends to take an approach more akin to that of Sault. If it means more albums like this, that should be fine, and she seems to know it. “This ain’t music one overlooks,” she snaps on Sideways, quite correctly”.
A sensational album from someone who we are very lucky to have, I wanted to spotlight Little Simz’s NO THANK YOU, as nobody expected it to arrive. As I said, you do not get many huge and unexpected albums coming out in December! A Christmas treat for her fans, go and listen to the masterpiece. A possible Mercury prize contender for 2023, I know that Little Simz will continue to dominate…
NEXT year.