It’s a drab afternoon on an industrial estate in London and I’m sitting, somewhat awkwardly, in the back of a parked car with Little Simz. The British-Nigerian rapper-singer-actor, 27, has spent the morning doing a photoshoot. The combination of closed cafés (England is still in lockdown) and persistent March drizzle has meant we’ve ended up in the car, an enormous 4x4 with TV screens built into the seats. Still wearing full makeup from the shoot, Simz is swaddled in comfortable grey sweatpants and a black, shiny puffer jacket. “People think I’m rude, or antisocial, or awkward, because I’m not chatty,” she says.
Simz, full name Simbiatu Ajikawo, doesn’t waste her words. When she talks, she is purposeful, precise, politely withholding. Yet from its overture, her fourth studio album reveals an interior world of cinematic proportions. “I’m definitely not the greatest at opening up,” she says today. But there are two Simz: the one that is by nature reticent and the Simz who wants to show you her universe.
Born and raised in north London, she was a shy performing arts kid who found her voice at St Mary’s Youth Club in Islington. As a teenager, she starred in TV shows on CBBC (Spirit Warriors) and E4 (Youngers), all the while making music and uploading it on SoundCloud and Bandcamp. By 21 she’d written, recorded and released four mixtapes, five EPs and an album (A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons), all on her own label, Age 101 Music. After a brief stint at the University of West London, she decided to pursue music full-time. In 2017, Kendrick Lamar described her as “the illest doing it right now”. In his 2019 headline set at Glastonbury, Stormzy shouted her out as a legend and one of 52 essential British artists coming through. Simz describes that year as the best of her life; she landed a recurring role in the Drake-sanctioned Netflix show Top Boy, and released her third album, Grey Area, to critical acclaim. In 2020, she won an Ivor Novello.
and sandals by bally.co.uk. Photograph: Jameela Elfaki/The Observer
About a year ago, Simz was in Los Angeles. She and her producer, Inflo, had recently started work on the new album and she was celebrating turning 26. When she thinks about that last burst of freedom before the pandemic, her mind takes her back to a changing room on the morning of her birthday. “I got a birthday outfit to wear later – a dress and heels, a little bag, a whole situation.” That night, she had dinner at Soho House with some friends who were in town, including Top Boy co-star Micheal Ward and singer-songwriter Jacob Banks. Later, they went clubbing. Then, shortly after, her manager called, panicky, and put her on a flight back to London. “As soon as I got home, I think the next day, lockdown.”
Suddenly, she was home alone, in her own head. “I live by myself,” she says. “I spent the time doing what everyone was doing really, just reflecting.” That period of reflection has led to some of her best work.
“I know that I’m quiet, innit?” she explains. “I’m just very to myself and I didn’t know how to really navigate that, especially coming in this industry where you’re expected to have this extroverted persona all the time.” Unlike many of her colleagues, Simz is notably low-key on Instagram and Twitter. “I wanted to just let people know like, yo, I’m actually this way inclined.” And so the theme of the new album emerged – an excavation of the things Simz would prefer to bury. “It’s me,” she says, “being this introverted person that has all these crazy thoughts and ideas and theories in my head and not always feeling like I’m able to express it if it’s not through my art.” The 19-track album is an epic, Wizard of Oz-style quest as Simz confronts her fears and counts her blessings. Spoken-word interludes are pit stops that give voice to her inner monologue; in one of them, an anonymous narrator who speaks in a clipped English accent is her Glinda the Good Witch. “Do you want 15 years or 15 minutes? Do not tire yourself out.” This is what the inside of Simz’s head sounds like.
Though she’s best known as a rapper rooted in hip-hop, Simz draws from a kaleidoscope of influences ranging from soul to funk, jazz and grime. When making the album, she studied timeless music – “classic albums” by Nina Simone and Etta James – not so much to borrow their sound, but their structure. When I ask what her Desert Island Discs are, she gets excited and pulls out her phone. “Ooohhh, let me go on my Spotty. Ah, see, look, I was just playing [Nina Simone’s] Baltimore. Probably Etta, At Last. A Love Supreme [by John] Coltrane. Records that any time you put on, you’re just in, it doesn’t feel dated.”
To get into the right headspace to finish the record, Simz fled London for Berlin, spending last summer in a city she’s been going back and forth to for years. She stayed with friends and rented a bike, chasing freedom and wide open spaces. “I can move in a way out there that sometimes I don’t feel too comfortable to do in London. I could go to the lake. I just wanted to be away from home.”
Simz is the youngest of four, and was mainly raised by her mother, a foster carer, after her parents split up when she was 11. Despite growing up as the baby of the family, she was expected to set an example for her foster siblings. Though she’s no longer living at home, there is the sense that she still carries the weight of that burden. “When I come back to London, I have a lot of responsibility, and I love bearing that responsibility, but in the same breath… In order for me to produce the art I make, I need to live. I need to have things to talk about.” Not everyday auntie, I venture. Her face cracks into a grin. “Exactly,” she replies.
Simz’s close relationship with her mum is well documented. She photographed her for an issue of GQ Style, a closeup portrait in monochrome, the words “BLACK IS” scrawled across her cheek. She was Simz’s date to the NME Awards (where she won Best British Album) and, according to a rare Instagram post, her Valentine. On the matter of her dad, she has been more tight lipped.
“My ego won’t fully allow me to say that I miss you/A woman who hasn’t confronted all her daddy issues,” she raps on I Love You, I Hate You. In the song, she discovers an old Polaroid and notes their resemblance, her tone hovering between rage and hurt. At one point she asks: “Is you a sperm donor or a dad to me?” When I bring it up, she clutches her chest. “It gives me anxiety, like, talking about it, but yeah, go for it,” she says, letting out a nervous laugh. Why did now feel like the right time to face her relationship with her father? She takes a breath. “Because I don’t want to be angry any more, man. It takes up too much energy and it takes up too much mental space… I just don’t wanna keep holding on to this anger towards this man that I barely even know. I know he’s my biological father and he wasn’t around for the majority of my life, but I don’t really know him.” Simz describes her heartbreak as so buried and internalised that initially, she didn’t even want to write about it. Her producer made the beat and asked her to talk about someone she loved and hated. “I was like, that beat’s shit! Just any excuse to not address it. I didn’t wanna go there.”
The song is about her, not him, and more reflection than rebuke. She talks about the strain it put on her and her mum. “Me in my teenage years taking it out on my mum when she’s doing her best, and the weight of having to be a single parent and your kid not being emotionally mature enough to understand, and they’re just rebelling. I understand these things a lot more, but it’s never to throw shade towards my dad,” she clarifies.
Her mum tried to prepare her for a hostile world. As one of the country’s most important Black British artists, and “a young Black woman in today’s society” (as she drily puts it herself), Simz knows she’s expected to speak out about injustice. “I’ve been processing my whole life, to be very real. This is, for some people, a wake-up call,” she says of the Black Lives Matter protests that took place last year. “My mum’s been telling me, you’re a Black girl, you’d better work twice as hard. I’ve been having teachers mispronounce my name. Sim-baya-tu, Sim-baya? My full name is Simbiatu. I’ve been stopped and searched, racially profiled, all of that. And I’ve been talking about this in my music for ever.”
Amid a sea of black squares on Instagram, Simz receded, taking a step back from social media. “Everyone’s emotions are heightened and there’s so much information that it’s difficult to process and work out how you actually feel. Not every Black person thinks and feels the same,” she’s quick to point out. And so instead she’s preferred to do her own independent learning, seeking out conversations with people in her community. “The other day, I went to pick up my niece. She lives with her great-grandma, who was born in 1929, and we sat there for like, three hours.” They spoke about her journey from Jamaica to London in the Windrush era, and how to make judicious housing investments. “She was dropping gems and I can’t give ’em all away, to be real,” she says with a smirk.
There are other things Simz won’t give away. There is a tension between what she’s willing to divulge in her music and her tendency to protect her personal life when asked about it directly. Nestled in the centre of her new record is an ode to what sounds like a committed relationship (“When planning for my future, I’ll be keeping you in mind”), the details of which she’d rather not be drawn on. I ask if she’s still in love. She falls silent, eyes darting exaggeratedly from left to right like a cartoon character. “This is so awkward,” she says. I tell her she was the one who wrote about it. “I know, I know,” she says. “I always forget I have to talk about this stuff. Sometimes it’s easier to draw from pain, but I don’t always want to draw from hurtful things, I want to talk about things that make me happy.”
A week later, we speak again, via Zoom. Simz is wearing an Arsenal shirt and, a child’s abstract painting is hanging on the wall behind her. Next to it is a photo of her with the artist, her nephew. I ask if her reluctance to discuss her feelings outside her music is a product of nature or nurture. “I think it’s a me problem. When it comes to business and my work, I’m not shy at all, I don’t hold back with that. I’m very serious and direct, but other stuff sometimes…” She stops, then sighs dramatically. She’s slowly getting better at opening up. After all this introspection, she’s ready to look outwards, as a summer with festivals and fewer restrictions beckons. “You come out of it, and it’s like, oh shit, now I’ve gotta perform it, and everyone’s gonna know how I really feel.” For someone who doesn’t like to let it all hang out, it sounds a little intense. “It is a lot, but at the same time, it is super freeing. I feel like I’m ready to gooooo for it. I’m charged.”
Little Simz’s new single, Introvert, is released on 21 April on Age 101
See full photoshoot here
