Little Simz-dirty aesthetics with dubstep rhythm

“To be honest, with all respect, I think I am very, very talented,” said London rapper Simbi Ajiko to “London Evening Standard” in 2021, in which she published her breakthrough album “Sometimes I Might Be an introvert” under the name Little Simz. And on “Gray Area”, Ajiko rapped in 2019: “I’m Jay-Z on a Bad Day, Shakespeare on My Worst Days”.

A few years, a Mercury Prize and two great albums later, there would be even less reason for modesty. “NONTIMES” followed “No Thanks You”, which-similar to the predecessor-is located in the US hip-hop as in pop history, which the music historian Simon Reynolds has worked out as “hardcore continuum”.

Its core elements are-in all shifts and mixing ratios in the references (drum ‘n’ bass, hip-hop, jungle and so on): “Beat science in search of the intersection between” fucked off “and” groovy “and” bass print “.

Little Simz comes from the Grime, that at the beginning of the nineties in the London Eastend of Wiley and Dizzee Rascal popularized subgenre, which combined dirty aesthetics with a dubstep rhythm and tendentially rapid rapeseed. When this Hardcore Continuum segment developed, Ajiko was just coming to primary school. In her latest album “Lotus” she continues what started on “Gray Area” at the latest: the rawness of Grime and Eastend-Hip-Hop is present-although mitigated in the sound-as an attitude-and combines with soul, orchestral samples and choirs, and also with postpunk guitars and Lauryn-Hill-like introspection. This creates something like a warm sound within a musical universe that is otherwise associated with urban hustle and bustle and stress evocation.

“Lotus” changes again like weightlessly between the registers: In the opener, Little Simz explains to her ex-producer Inflo, who is supposed to owe her 1.7 million pounds and now runs a legal dispute, what kind of asshole he is. What would otherwise be anecdotic in a genre-typical ego-related hip-hop piece, at Little Simz in “Thief”, becomes a general piece about fraud and betrayal, also in other business relationships (“i’m tryna forgive myelf, i don’t need to forgive you”). In addition, brittle, bad guitars – and a state of emergency (“flood”) became a sound afterwards.

“Lotus” swings back and forth between the gentle-orchestral ambient soul and hip-hop tracks and do not use everything-from Lauryn Hill to the Streets-to quote it, but to turn it into something of your own. In »Only« the strings thrust on and down again and again, Little Simz sings a duet with Lydia Kitto. In the deeply relaxed “free” as well as in the directly subsequent “Peace” it is another time about self -forgiveness and inner peace – the two actual topics of the album. In conjunction with the Nigerian singer Obongjayar, “Lion” becomes a driving AfroBeat-Reenactment. And the title track is an almost pompous mid-tempo hip-hop piece.

So much diversity in the same amount of consistency, style awareness and your own handwriting is otherwise very rare with eclectic music.

Little Simz: »Lotus« (Sony Music/Membran)