Little Simz
NO THANK YOU
Forever Living Originals/AWAL
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During a recent football match involving Manchester City, their new signing Erling Braut Haaland scored twice within the first half and looked as if scoring goals was as easy and as natural to him as breathing—much as he had since his big money move in the Summer of 2022. As the players headed down the tunnel for their halftime break, the footage inevitably turned to the assorted experts and analysts in the BT Sport studio. Dumbfounded by what they had seen, they effectively gave up any kind of insight to bask in his excellence, shrug apologetically and laugh in bemusement, lost in the face of his clinical perfection.
It's very hard not to feel the same way as those football pundits listening to Little Simz’s new album NO THANK YOU, such is the quality of the material here. Having won the UK’s Mercury Prize and many other plaudits for her last album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (2021), you would be forgiven for thinking she might take a step back before following up that expansive, all-encompassing masterpiece.
But anyone acquainted with her collaborator and friend Inflo’s ways would tell you that another volume of excellence wouldn’t take long to surface. After all, SAULT (the collective they are both part of) just released five albums. At the same time.
At ten tracks, NO THANK YOU is considerably shorter than its predecessor, but no less impressive. There was a lustrous, grandiose feeling to its precursor courtesy of Inflo’s flourishes of strings and other orchestration, and while that persists in moments here (on “Silhouette” for example), this feels less obviously expansive but equally varied in its own way.
The success Simz has achieved in the last 15 months or so has clearly come at a cost though, as her lyrics express her dissatisfaction with the industry and the dangers that lurk in its machinations, as well as a head-on confrontation with the taboo topic of mental health in the Black community. And she has a lot to say. Some of the songs extend to five minutes in length and while space is sometimes given to bask in the stellar music that accompanies her, it is also true that she reels off verse after verse of pointed, honest and wounded rhymes with barely a word or breath wasted.
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Those overriding themes of the nefarious music industry and the sharp end of fame and success appear throughout the album, but often during the same song, weaving in and out of her stream of consciousness with ease. And, of course, there is the constant specter of racism looming above proceedings—she gives voice to the price of living while Black in a society that takes every chance to divide and debase Black people.
Earlier this year, it became clear that Simz split from her long-time manager and, despite no official comment from either camp, it’s hard not to conclude that some of her ire is aimed in that direction. On the laid-back groove of opener “Angel” she alludes to general notions common in the music business, reflecting, “Learnin’ everything I didn’t on the come up / We was too busy making music till the sun up / Every day through the summer / Didn’t learn the business and now I’m ducking for cover / What a fuck up.”
But then she gets more specific on “No Merci,” rhyming, “I was down and now had my bank account untamed / Trustin’ of the people billin’ every call made / Everybody here gettin’ money off my name / Irony is I’m the only one not getting paid / You’ve been tannin’ in the sun, so now I’ma throw shade.”
Though Cleo Sol has made appearances on Simz’s last two albums, her presence is felt even more here with co-writing credits on a number of songs and her voice lighting up choruses that add further drama to Simz’s already overpowering rhymes. Gospel choirs also swirl powerfully around “X,” “Silhouette” and the impeccable “Broken,” and the overall effect of Simz’s lyrics, Sol’s vocals and the choir’s holy force is overwhelming and all-encompassing.
The aforementioned “Broken” is seven-and-a-half minutes of lyrical and musical excellence. It outlines the pain, stress and self-doubt that Simz herself feels before extrapolating it wider to take in the experience of immigrant life in the UK. The final instrumental flourishes bring serenity and some chance of healing, and provide a turning point in the album.
The songs that follow deal with the desire for equilibrium (“Sideways”), the need to stop caring what others think (“Who Even Cares”) and the self-explanatory “Control.” The arc of the album bends towards progress for the artist, as she frees herself from the machinations of an industry that strangles artistry in favor of money, and gains some kind of elusive peace and love.
While Haaland’s excellence may have seemed a mystery to those football pundits, there is no mystery to Simz’s. For years now she has been at the top of her game and the connection with her friend Inflo is a match made in heaven—his ever-expanding musical imagination and her intelligent, insightful and emotive lyrics have few, if any, equals. If her newfound artistic freedom means more output with him (and the other collaborators here), then her status as one of the best and most important artists of her generation can only go from strength to strength.
Notable Tracks: “Broken” | “Heart On Fire” | “Silhouette” | “X”
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