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Photo by Jack Brigland
4 LITTLE SIMZ Since 2012, North London hip-hop artist Little Simz has put out 10 mixtapes. As if that weren’t showing off her work ethic enough, she’s also released three full-lengths since 2015 and toured with the likes of Gorillaz, Anderson .Paak and AbSoul. Praise for her work has come from high places too, like the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick Lamar, and she’s been picked as a special guest on Lauryn Hill’s upcoming Diaspora Calling! US tour. Little Simz released her first album A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons (2015) when she was only 21 and quickly set out rapping with confidence. She even challenged the musical establishment on the track “Wings,” with lyrics like, “Good things come to the people that wait and I waited / tell me, do you believe the quote above I stated? / nobody handed me a dream, I had to chase it.” Then, her second full-length, Stillness in Wonderland (2016), is a concept album based on Alice in Wonderland. It’s a full multimedia experience simultaneously existing alongside a companion comic, an art exhibition, a short film and a music festival. GREY Area (2019) chooses a decidedly different path, ditching the samples for live instruments. Songs like “Venom,” with its drum kit and strings section, offer the kind of organic sound that wouldn’t be out of place on a Wu-Tang or Tribe Called Quest album. On GREY Area, Simz is building a case for where she should be among those that came before, and it’s clear she’s only going to accept one particular place. » – Nathan Royster
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QUICK TRACKS
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“101 FM”
“Offence”
A 16-bit foil to the rest of the album, it delivers an angular, bouncy riff paired with a stopand-go flow.
A static, flute-driven jazz track, it sets her album’s manifesto right away with a frank sense of humour: “I said it with my chest and I don’t care who I offend, uh huh/ha.”
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