I used to play a video game on my computer… Where I had little Sims. New Post time!

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Good Morning to you – I’m Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for me to get typing up for your daily track on the blog, as per usual, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Little Simz is an artist who I truly feel is paving the way for a lot of female, black and hip-hop artists in the UK. I absolutely lapped up everything on 2019’s ‘Grey Area’ and the ‘Drop 6’ EP that she put out last year, and Simbi absolutely knocked it out of the park with her Glastonbury performance two years ago. Her fourth album, ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’, has seen a quicker turn-around from her that I was perhaps expecting, and she recorded the new body of work largely during lockdown in London and Berlin. It releases on September 3rd via Age 101 Records, and she’s said that it explores her personal life in an industry where everyone is expected to be “extrovert”. Her last album picked up Best Album awards at the NME Awards and the Ivor Novello Awards, along with scooping up a nomination for the Mercury Prize that year, and so I can see her picking up a bit more mainstream attention for this record than her last effort seemed to get, and BBC Radio 1 have started playing this one. Check out the comeback single below.

Despite her difficulties with opening up, Simbi finds her music to be her most pure form of expression, with tabloid The Observer revealing that her new album is 19 tracks long in length, some of which are Spoken Word interludes created to form a narrative. It says the record is “an epic, Wizard Of Oz-style quest as Simz confronts her fears and counts her blessings” that addresses a distanced connection with her father and the results of a relationship. One thing that we all loved about ‘Grey Area’ is that Simbi was very cool and collected, yet outspoken and wouldn’t compromise her work for any nonsense. It’s a trend that Simbi leans into once again on ‘Introvert’, where there’s certainly a lot to unpack in this 6-minute epic. It is somewhat similar to her work on the prior record, but she’s leaning a bit more into the soulful and Gospel undertones of her sound, and it feels like a natural progression for her, as an artist, into the new record. She mostly expresses the her experience of being a Black women today, with a visceral opening and a swelling String crescendo that gives the track a dramatic, sometimes cinematic, mood. Yet, she also balances her cutting edge vocals about race and identity with a personal contrast where she raps about her private feelings and her public persona. I’ve always felt that Hip-Hop has always allowed for the most fascinating contrasts for it’s artists to examine their role as a person and a performer, and Simbi provides a fresh take on it with ‘Introvert’ as she discusses her own desire to be left alone. Being reserved isn’t exactly a common asset when you’re projecting your music, potentially to the masses, and so I find it intriguing that she brings us into her own mindset and the idea that she seems to have different variations of her personality for different situations. So, overall, what do I think of the grand return? Well, I think it’s just absolutely solid. To be honest, it’s only been released to the world for a couple of days, and so I don’t think that I have spent enough time with it yet for it to personally connect with me on the same level that ‘Grey Area’ did, but that’s certainly not to say that it won’t. Everything that I love about Simbi and more is here though, and one thought I had is that it feels more like a trailer or preview for the new album than a standalone single, and so I can’t wait to hear the full results when the album becomes available… One day after my birthday, eerily. I mean, did you hear her flow on this track? Holy Mother of sacred cows, she’s good. It’s blindingly clear to me that she’s not just your average artist. A modern icon.

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If you’re not on board with the hype train for the new Little Simz record like I am – here’s a few things to tempt you over. Get up to speed with my thoughts on ‘God Bless Mary’ here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2019/09/04/todays-track-little-simz-god-bless-mary/, and my thoughts on last year’s ‘Where’s My Lighter’, with Alewya as the featured artist, here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2020/05/15/little-simz-feat-alewya-wheres-my-lighter/

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That’s all for today – I can’t believe it’s nearly time again for another ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ post tomorrow, yet, here we are. Join me then for a throwback to a 90’s classic from a staple West Midlands indie rock band who have just announced a huge 30th anniversary tour. Their frontman has also been a hero during the pandemic for many with his listening parties on Twitter. If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/