Rating: 9/10
Little Simz's hotly-anticipated 4th album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is here, and it's clear to see that the 27-year-old is at the absolute top of her game.
On Sometimes I Might Be Introvert Little Simz has a lot to say and she's not holding back. Not only is Little Simz a phenomenal wordsmith with her lyrics filled with brutality, honesty, and commentary, but she doesn't allow the production or melodies to slip. Throughout the album, we see a mix of intense beats and more groovy energy, which show versatility to Little Simz's style of rap, which allows for the album to ebb and flow nicely.
The album appropriately opens up with the intense 5-minute long 'Introvert' which is the first song on which we find actress Emma Corrin being sampled. Her voice appears on several songs throughout the album, and it's clearly intentional that she's using the voice she uses to play Princess Diana aka 'The People's Princess. This contradiction between the posh royal voice and Little Simz's hard-cutting lyrics feels harsh, but makes the track interesting and gives it another level of thought. With verses featuring lyrics like "I bottle up and then spill it in verses / One day I'm wordless, next day I'm a wordsmith / Close to success but to happiness, I'm the furthest" it's clear to see that Little Simz is going fiercely introspective with Introvert, and this isn't where that deep look inside her own life and career stops.
However, Little Simz also looks outwards to the world around her for many songs on the album. Taking on difficult topics like race, feminism, family relationships, and violence, with specific comments on the gang violence that's rife throughout London. These are topics we see discussed in a lot of British rap and grime music, but the way Little Simz approaches these topics feels incredibly fresh. On Little Q Pt II we see the story of a relation of Simz that got stabbed as a result of gang violence, which takes on a very forgiving perspective, explaining "Not the mental scars, the physical's all you see / But the boy that stabbed me is just as damaged as me / I could have been the reflection that he hated".
There's so much to this album that it feels like you could easily write a thesis of it, and every time another listen goes around, you find something new that makes you really step back and admire the remarkable maturity and ingenuity of this severely underrated artist.
After 'Venom' from previous album Grey Area (2019) went viral on TikTok earlier this year, it seems like Little Simz has not just perked the ears of the critics, but a brand new audience of young people, specifically women, across the globe who have may not discover her without help from the app. Critical success has historically been difficult for British female rappers to achieve, but there is a light with this new audience combined with the sheer talent within the album that may just make Sometimes I Might Be Introvert Little Simz's most commercially successful album to date.
With some of the most popular rappers in the world releasing albums in the last few weeks, including Kanye and Drake in the last week, it actually seems that Little Simz has left all of them in the dirt with this exceptional new release. here's hoping that the rapper finally achieves the critical and commercial success she deserves with Sometimes I Might Be Introvert.