FEATURE:
Sherbert Sunset
Little Simz’s GREY Area at Five
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SOME might say….
PHOTO CREDIT: Jen Ewbank
that a fifth anniversary is not a big thing. Like it is half-way to a proper anniversary. In my opinion, it is important to mark a fifth anniversary. It is quite a big deal. In any case, there are two albums that arrived on 1st March, 2019 that are worth highlighting. The other, Solange’s When I Get Home, is one I am also covering. For this feature, I want to go deeper with Little Simz’s GREY Area. Since the release of her third studio album, Simz released the Mercury-winning album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, in 2021. NO THANK YOU came out at the end of 2022. The E.P., Drop 7, came out on 9th February. I also forgot to mention that Drop 6 came out in 2020. She has been pretty busy since 2019! There will be great excitement around a possible new album this year. She seems to get stronger and more amazing with every release. GREY Area is arguably one of her best albums. Nominated for the 2019 Mercury Prize – it lost out to Dave’s PYSCHODRAMA -, this album should get love ahead of its fifth anniversary. I will come to a couple of the glowing reviews for GREY Area. Even though it charted low in the U.K., it did reach number one on the R&B Chart, oddly. Regardless, GREY Area is now seen as one of the finest albums of the 2010s. A masterful and stunning work of brilliance from one of our best artists and musicians. I want to start with an interview from The Line of Best Fit:
“Essentially, this is what the album’s about. It’s one big grey area. Nothing is black and white. Nothing is set in stone,” Simz says.
It’s not the only time that Simz, whose real name is Simbi Ajikawo, debates life’s twists and turns during our conversation. There’s an uncertainty, she says, that’s symptomatic of this period of adulthood. “I think the more I speak to my friends and people in my age group about it, the more I realise we’re all going through it,” she says.
“Some people go through it silently and some people are a bit more vocal. I think I was someone dealing with it to myself silently until I started opening up and was like, ‘Oh, so you’re going through it as well? Oh, sick.’ I mean, not sick! But just that I don't feel so alone in it.”
GREY Area arrives after a couple of years of intense highs and lows in which Simz has played sold-out headline shows, collected MOBO nods, and joined Lauryn Hill on the hip-hop queen’s recent anniversary tour. Simz talks of “life-changing” experiences, including a tour with Gorillaz in 2017. “A lot has changed. My life is changing in such a drastic way. Just being in that environment with Gorillaz, around legends – it definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things.”
But the peaks met the troughs. “I think, personally, the more I was on the go and away from home, the more I missed out on family and friends,” Simz explains. “I guess I just found it a bit hard to keep that balance of work and personal.”
Simz thinks that she possibly overwhelmed herself in 2017 for her second record’s promo cycle and other collaborations, which spun her into a “constant state of anxiety” and “just being down.”
“Obviously people see you on stage, and they live through your social media, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes,” Simz says, addressing the facade of a ‘glamourous’ music industry. “There’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of hard work. I took on a lot. I think it kind of affected my physical and mental state a little. I hadn’t given myself a moment to just breathe. I felt like people expected a lot from me, and I was just giving and giving and giving and burning myself out.”
The antidote was throwing herself back into making music once the tours were over. “I really took time and just got in the studio and worked. I kinda needed that; I kinda needed that time to cleanse and be stationary. Hone in on my thoughts and focus everything.”
Simz is grateful, for herself at least, that creating music is both a passion and a coping mechanism. “Some people will go through stuff and, I dunno, turn to substance abuse – whatever it is they need to deal with certain things,” she says. “But I’m lucky enough that my outlet was music, getting in the studio and being able to write about these things. After I’d written the album I did feel a sense of clarity and like, ‘Ok, I know where I’m at at now. It feels like I’m normal again. I’m functioning like a human being as opposed to a robot.’”
Perhaps this is little surprise; those familiar with Simz’ back catalogue will know that she’s a prolific writer. In the space of nine years she’s released four mixtapes, seven EPs, and – including GREY Area which drops this Friday – three studio albums. To date, everything has been released on her own label AGE 101.
Growing up, Simz was a keen, precocious performer. She was showcasing her talents in drama classes from the age of nine. By 11, she was playing her own music at Islington Academy. In her teens she secured a role on the CBBC superhero show Spirit Warriors and later a role in E4 youth drama Youngers. Then she turned back to music. In 2013, aged 19, Simz released her fourth mixtape Blank Canvas, premiering it via Jay-Z’s Life + Times website.
Simz’ debut record, 2015’s A Curious Tale Of Trials + Persons, was a concept album about fame replete with role-playing characters and Simz’ pithy rhymes. Its 2016 follow-up, Stillness In Wonderland, displayed musical vignettes about navigating life’s uncertainties via a rich tapestry of R&B, electronica and jazz. On the latter record’s track, “Wings”, Simz spits: “This the type of music that ain’t never going to sell? / Well, what if I prove you wrong?”
"I’m tapping into the more musician side of me as opposed to just the rapper side...I play instruments so I’m listening to things with different ears now”
Is she trying to prove naysayers wrong? Simz has no doubt produced some of her most impactful, immediate material to date in GREY Area. In “Offence” it’s clattering beats, contorted synths, and jazz flutes bolster incredible affirmations: “I'm Jay Z on a bad day / Shakespeare on my worst day.” Meanwhile, “101 FM” is an engrossing tale of Simz’ life story over a looping, pentatonic video game 8-bit hook. “Boss” has the bluesy snarl and stomp of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger”. In fact, she namedrops West later in the song: “Learnt from 'Ye then went and touched the sky n****” Throughout the record Simz equips artistic self-belief with sturdy mechanics.
“I think it was all a natural progression to be honest,” she says of these brasher sounds. “I didn’t go into writing this album thinking, ‘I want this to reach more people.’ I mean, obviously I want it to reach more people, but I want to make music that this time round is going to transcend. It was more that, for me, I wanted to be more experimental and try new things.”
Simz, who describes the writing and recording process as “a true collaboration”, adds that GREY Area is her most musical work to date. She’s picked instruments up more than ever this time. In the past she’s been stuck with the label “UK female MC” or “rapper” (a mistake she once corrected The Guardian about).
Really, Simz is an artist in myriad ways. She raps, writes lyrics, composes, produces, and ‘dabbles’ with the drums, guitar and bass. ‘I’m tapping into the more musician side of me as opposed to just the rapper side,” she says. “I play instruments so I’m listening to things with different ears now”.
I think GREY Area was the album where I discovered Little Simz. When I truly tuned into her work. I went back and listened to Stillness in Wonderland (2016) and A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons (2015). The Independent sat down with Little Simz to discuss the awe-inspiring GREY Area. Many observing how this was her most complete and confident work to date:
“I don’t open up to people,” she says. Yet the 25-year-old, born Simbi Ajikawo, is hardly reticent, as we sit by the window of a pub overlooking the Thames – around 20 minutes away from where she grew up in North London – to discuss her superb new album, GREY Area.
“At the time I was writing, I was in a very confusing headspace,” she explains. “Everything was in this weird area, and it was all a shade of grey. Being in your mid-twenties feels like a strange place to be. I’m still discovering myself and things are a lot more complex than they were five years ago. Nothing’s straightforward. I’m peeling off layers as I’m getting older, and finding more and more about myself.”
This feeling of being adrift provided the title for her new record. GREY Area is her third studio album, in a career that has also seen the release of five EPs, a mention on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list, praise from Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar, collaborations with everyone from Ghetts to Gorillaz, and a tour with her idol Lauryn Hill. It is an LP that, one hopes, will finally snag her a more mainstream audience and put a stop to the “underrated” tag that precedes most mentions of her name.
“I did go through a phase where I didn’t understand what more I had to do to prove myself,” she recalls. “Sometimes I go on my Twitter and I see comments like ‘Simz is so stepped on, so underrated’, but I can’t keep focusing on the people who don’t wanna f*** with me. I’m over it. I’m just putting my energy into the people who have been supporting, and who get it and understand what I’m trying to do. Maybe that’s just me getting older.”
I think that’s what makes my music have this international feel,” she says. “I’m from London – this is my home – but I feel as though my music can stretch way beyond. And especially with this album, I think we’ve found a clever way to open it up a lot more.”
It helped to surround herself with a team of people she trusted to make the record, such as her childhood friend Inflo, GREY Area’s producer, whose previous credits include Michael Kiwanuka’s breakthrough album Love & Hate. “We had that chemistry there already,” Simz says, “so getting in the studio was easy.”
There are moments of startling vulnerability on GREY Area, but before you reach them you’re met with the full-throttle assault of “Offence” – where Simz weaponises her formidable lyrical skills (“I’m Jay-Z on a bad day, Shakespeare on my worst days”) before unleashing the war cry: “I said it with my chest and I don’t care who I offend”.
“If you get offended, then that’s on you,” Simz says now. “I’m not doing this cheap stuff just because I’m female.” She wanted this record to have a gritty, Nineties underground vibe, which led to elements like the vocal distortion on “Boss”. She also worked with live musicians rather than samples, which she “didn’t have the luxury of doing” on the 2017 concept album Stillness in Wonderland. She has also included three featured artists, all carefully chosen and vastly different to one another: Jamaican reggae star Chronixx, with whom she last collaborated on the 2016 track “LMPD”; Kiwanuka; and the Swedish electronic band Little Dragon”.
It is worth bringing in an interview from Vice. There are some interesting exchanges and revelations from the interview. A very natural and honest artist who is inspiring others coming through. GREY Area was a massive statement that announced Simz as one of the finest voices of her generation:
“Simz started rapping aged nine, putting music up online and getting on mics wherever she could around London via her star-making youth clubs (I’m talking Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke as other alums). Born Simbi Ajikawo and raised in Holloway by her mother, a devoted foster carer, Simz’s gallons of creative energy needed an outlet. So as a teen she acted too, appearing on TV shows like CBBC’s Spirit Warriors and E4’s Youngers, but music kept drawing her back. By the time she’d started her music technology degree at University of West London, in Ealing, her career was taking off. And she soon realised she couldn’t do both. Quitting uni would show both sides to herself: her ambition, and her insistence on doing things her own way. Really, she’d been like that her whole life. As a child, she remembers, “100% my vibe was ‘I’m just doing my thing,’ literally. And as much as it may be shocking to people that I’m indie and doing music, if you know me from when I was little I’ve always moved in a way that is independent. I’ve always done my own thing. My friends and that, close people, my family, they know this about me: Simbi moves how she wants to move. I’m not following no this and that.”
You can see that in how she’s built a career as an independent artist. But beyond that, Simz has pushed on with unorthodox projects – absolutely loads of EPs, curating a festival, never once changing her sound to please others, slapping away the dreaded “femcee” label – without much initial support from the traditional UK music industry gatekeepers. Yes, she’s received MOBO Award nominations and recognition from ticketing app Dice, for her live shows, plus an Association of Independent Music Award for her 2016 debut album A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons. But it took a good few years for her co-signs to flood in outside the easily siloed world of black music (which now underpins the majority of pop, even when people try to brush it away with an ‘urban’ tag). She still hasn’t received a major award nod.
Even spending a short time in her presence, you clock that she’d rather get on with the work. I mention how Grey Area feels like a snapshot, of her headspace and outlook now. Unlike her past releases, focused on near-fantastical worlds and dream-like states, Grey Area is grounded in today, in London, in her. “It’s funny you say that, cos the other day, I was listening to my oooold music. My Soundcloud stuff, and that. And I was like, ‘oh my days, I proper remember feeling like that.’ I just… remember, you know? As I’ve continued on my journey, I’ve forgotten some things, cos I’m so focused on going forward, going forward, going forward. But what I deeped is that without me even knowing, I’ve been documenting my life for as long as I can remember. And that’s so cool… I’ve had so many streams of thoughts, and I’ve put them all out there.” Sometimes, doing so felt daunting, she adds, but it was all worth it.
Our conversation meanders for a bit, as our food now sits cold on our plates. We discuss how young rappers are now expected to arrive fully-formed, engaging on social media and opening themselves up to public scrutiny without much protection. Since she started so young too, I wonder if she ever takes the time to reflect on what’s she’s accomplished so far, as an independent artist in such a wild wild west industry. It’s a few days shy of her 25th birthday. She pauses for a bit, sipping her juice. “You know what’s mad? Last night, I prayed.” She sounds relaxed now, more at ease. “I was praying for aaaages, it was a long prayer. I was going through points in my life and thanking god for that time when I done that, and done this. And as I was saying it out loud I was like, ‘oh yeah… I’ve done that. I’ve been an award nominee, I’ve played there…’ I can forget those things. Going forward, the next five years, when I’m 30 – and I know I’m chilling now – I’m so excited to grow wiser”.
I will come to some reviews now. AllMusic highlight how Little Simz comes out swinging from the opening track. GREY Area is an album that wastes no time in getting under the skin and into the head. A faultless work from a genius:
“British rapper Little Simz has been a prominent figure on the scene for several years; even so, she is often sidelined by the rise of grime and U.K. drill in spite of her introspective, prescient wordplay and desire to explore interesting and diverse styles. On her third full-length album, Grey Area, Simz has reached a new peak, with an honest record that isn't afraid to take shots at the world at large. It's also incredibly concise -- an aspect that many of her peers often miss the mark on -- with no filler despite the broad variation the record boasts.
Simz comes out swinging on opening track "Offence," which acts as a declaration of intent for everything that follows, as she bellows "I said it with my chest and I don't care who I offend." It acts in part as a battle cry but also as a primer for truths, both personal and social, that she is capable of exploring. This double-edged approach is demonstrated over the next two tracks, with "Boss" aiming outward and "Selfish" decidedly inward; the latter is a master class in songwriting -- it manages to be soothing and powerful in equal measure. The lush instrumentation draws comparisons to Solange's "Cranes in the Sky," as the vocal range and classy atmosphere in both tracks brings them unavoidably parallel to each other.
Grey Area has no real weaknesses, as Simz takes her sound in multiple directions without sacrificing quality. Take the nostalgia trip of "101 FM," which has an unconventional melody and takes an unashamedly rose-tinted look at days gone by yet remains captivating. It slides straight into the low-slung groove of "Pressure" featuring Little Dragon -- who continue to stun with their guest spots. They act as one of four collaborators, also including Cleo Sol, Chronixx, and Michael Kiwanuka, all of whom are used to add flavor rather than dominate the songs they appear on.
At this stage in her career, Little Simz is at the top of her game, asserting herself as a global contender by displaying well-realized variety and concise lyrical flow. Her evolution up to this point was a clear signifier, with all the components in place even in her early work; on Grey Area, it feels as if everything has come together in perfect unison, resulting in one of the strongest rap albums of 2019”.
I will end with NME’s assessment of GREY Area. It does turn five on 1st March. I hope that Little Simz gives it a nod. An album that took her to new heights, go and listen to it if you have not heard it before. It is an album that will instantly draw you in:
“Fiercely confident and unapologetically forthright, the stunning new album from Little Simz is a reminder of her bold – and, sadly, sometimes underrated – talent. With punching bass lines and whip-smart melodies, 25-year-old Simbi Ajikawo takes us on a wild ride through her world, laying her vulnerability bare with admirable openness.
The London rapper has been co-signed by Kendrick Lamar and was the first independent artist on Forbes’ ‘30 under 30’ list. But her previous record, 2016’s ‘Stillness In Wonderland’, flew under the mainstream’s radar, perhaps because it’s a knotty concept album that demands the listener’s close attention. She’s since confessed that she’s questioned her craft, and wondered whether her hard work is worth not having her loved ones around. Well, ‘Grey Area’ is filled with immediate, punchy hooks, and we’re all the better for it.
The record swells with pride, and Simbi’s celebration of her sense of worth is catching. See opening track, ‘Offence’, where she reminds us that she’s back again and has to pick up where she left off before (“I said it with my chest / I don’t care who I offend – uh huh!”). Her unapologetic words, coupled with that vicious beat, make you feel unbreakable, and set the tone for the journey you’re about to embark on.
On ‘Flowers’, the final track, Simz wonders if the ambition she has for herself – wanting to be legendary and iconic – comes with darkness. Here, she reflects on her idols, such as Amy Winehouse and Jimi Hendrix, and ruminates on their dizzying highs, but tragic endings. It’s a indication of the mindset she was in while writing ‘Grey Area’; the north London powerhouse was going through a dark time, which became pivotal in her creative process. You can hear this free-flowing energy – up and down– that runs through the album.
Across these 10 tracks, Simz utilises her most valuable commodity: honesty. Having stripped away the narrative cloak that shrouded the highlights of ‘Stillness In Wonderland’, she’s crafted a knockout record – and finally come true on her early promise. This is the best rap record of the year so far”.
On 1st March, we mark five years of GREY Area. From the peerless Little Simz, she would go on to create perhaps even stronger work. I feel her third studio album is very important. A moment when she shifted up a gear. A gem from 2019, it deserved more awards and chart success. Even so, now, it is viewed as one of the best albums from the last decade. Five years from its release, GREY Area has lost…
NONE of its brilliance.