Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert Review
Truly, this is one of the strongest albums of the year and deserves all the plaudits it’s already been getting – if not more.
Over the last five or so years, Little Simz has made some serious waves in UK hip-hop, with praise heaped onto her from the likes of Ms Lauryn Hill and Kendrick Lamar. It wasn’t until her last LP, GREY Area, though, that her talent was recognised more widely across the board, with that album being one of the most acclaimed releases of 2019. While GREY Area was industrial and abrasive, with impact coming from the powerful, provocative lyrics, this new album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, has a more of a lush palate. With Inflo’s production and Simz’s storytelling, this album is grandiose, bombastic and just generally beautiful, scarcely missing a beat despite its 65-minute runtime.
Replacing the distorted bass instrumentals with a grand, orchestral soundscape, the opener, ‘Introvert’, makes Simz’s ambitions clear right from the start: this album won’t slip under the radar. While much of the track discusses inequalities and poverty, there is also some foreshadowing of the introspection to come in the rest of the album, as she struggles with the yin and yang of two competing personalities: “Simz the artist or Simbi the person”. What’s particularly impressive about the production and general aesthetic here, and throughout the album, is the way it manages to sound unique and ambitious but is still accessible – a balance that many other albums struggle to find.
‘Woman’, again, is a perfect example of this. It’s smooth and casually listenable, but still has a lush, jazzy instrumental and beautiful lyrics celebrating women of colour. This is then followed by ‘Two Worlds Apart’, where Simz starts to flex a bit more. The rapping takes a slightly more laid-back approach at first over the Smokey Robinson sample, but as the song progresses the aggression she often carries starts to return in small flashes. This isn’t the only track where Simz’s lyrics are braggadocious, which is usually a style that grinds a little on me, but here I feel that she manages to get away with it without just sounding arrogant. Partly, this is because the quality of the music does warrant some bragging rights, but also it’s the way she avoids comparison with it – she just wants to focus on how she’s doing, staying in her own lane rather than getting involved in manufactured conflicts (looking at you Drake and Kanye).
‘I Love You, I Hate You’ is one of the most interesting tracks here, as it details her fractured relationship with her father. The lyrics are direct, personal and emotive, as she reflects on the conflicting emotions of familial love and her anger about her father’s absence. ‘Little Q Pt. 2’, which also has one of the strongest beats on the album, features the most moving lyrical reflection on the album as she considers her cousin’s close encounter with death where she still somehow has compassion for the boy that stabbed him. At the same time, both of these songs remain catchy and accessibly listenable despite their darker, more personal themes.
There are, however, some faults on this album – albeit not many. The most frustrating of these is the interludes, which often feature mostly cliches, and last up to three minutes. They do serve a purpose, of course, as they help to break up the album and the variety of aesthetics, escaping any jarring changes in sound, but they are leaned on a little too heavily on this album, becoming skippable quite quickly. The only other real mark against this project is the track ‘Rollin Stone’, which is just a complete miss. The first half takes off sounding like a cut that could have made it onto GREY Area, but then, after the beat switch, her pitch-shifted and monotone vocals grate a little and the flow is probably also the weakest on the record.
‘Point and Kill’ and ‘Fear No Man’ are another couple of really strong tracks towards the end of the record. Again, both have a slightly braggadocious vibe to them, but still managing to exude confidence instead of cockiness, more of a “take me as I am” anything else. These two tracks also particularly highlight Inflo’s production, both of these songs crossing over sonically with his work with Sault, with more West African influence on the instrumentals here. The transition between these tracks is also particularly smooth, as is the case at several points on this album, with other highlights for me being between ‘Woman’ and ‘Two Worlds Apart’, and between ‘Speed’ and ‘Standing Ovation’, where Simz also makes her greatest statement in terms of rapping performance on this album.
The album closes out with another distinct couplet in ‘How Did You Get Here’ and ‘Miss Understood’. The former of these sounds very naturally like it’d be the closing track, reflecting on her pride in getting to where she dreamed of being when younger, and how recording her fourth album made that sink in. It has the grand, Kanye-like production found dotted throughout the record, with chanted background vocals and an abundantly layered instrumental. ‘Miss Understood’ still doesn’t feel out of place after this though, coming across almost like an encore.
In many ways, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is an album of juxtapositions: of the love and hate towards her father, of where she came from and where she is, of her introverted and extraverted selves, and of the pain and joy which lead so often to creating great art. The chemistry between producer Inflo and Little Simz on this album is also on a level so few other pairings can find, allowing both of them to flourish with one another’s sound and style. After the set-up from GREY Area, there was a lot of expectation coming into this album, for I imagined it being my album of the year right from the first single release, and it has absolutely not disappointed. There is evident ambition in the grandeur of the sound and the length of this record, and it is fulfilled in the execution: Simz sounds confident and comfortable, delivering introspective and emotive bars over theatrical, maximalist, but still unintrusive instrumentals. Truly, this is one of the strongest albums of the year and deserves all the plaudits it’s already been getting – if not more.
