Maybe now, with Grey Area, the mainstream consciousness has finally caught up with Simz and her brain-pummelling nuances.
It's an auteur-like way of working that's been celebrated in similarly visionary peers like Gaika and Kojey Radical. Simz has been steadily innovating across her already sprawling oeuvre in ways that surpass some of her more critically-acclaimed and mainstream-applauded peers – repping London talent before big brands co-opted the entire city, playing with pulsing basslines and strings prior to the contemporary jazz boom, experimenting across the mediums of art and music with a graphic novel, festival curating, and art exhibition. Despite all this, she's flown almost criminally under the radar.
She has been compared to Lauryn Hill and joined the iconoclast on tour, guested with the Gorillaz, and received praise from grime godfather Dizzee Rascal and more.
Thematically, Simz struggled with self-worth and being. 2016's Stillness In Wonderland, her gloriously experimental second album, wasn't commercially successful but still received hot critical praise for its lyrical candour, imaginative concept, and enthusiastic melding of jazz, grime, R&B and soul. Her 2015 debut A Curious Tale Of Trials + Persons saw her lauded by Kendrick Lamar as "the illest" of the moment. In her nine-year career, the 24-year-old – real name Simbi Ajikawo – has remained a fervently independent artist, choosing to release multiple EPs and albums on her own Age 101 imprint. The London MC's own threshold-crossing has been creatively rewarding, but challenging. Is this a personality trait, or a passing fancy? A staunch ideal or a feeling in transition? Little Simz' third studio album, Grey Area, sees her swing confidently through the duality of youth to harness the harshest of her vulnerable, raw moments, and the best savage, wisdom-weaponry, giving each reflection on herself pride and place on this record. It's both cavernous and oppressive, as we reach for what is us, or us in motion. Our twenties are an aching tug between adolescence and adulthood a hard-to-define era with a malaise that's difficult to pinpoint, yet well-captured in music and art.
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