Little Simz interview: ‘If you get offended by me, that’s on you’

As she releases her third album GREY Area, the north London artist speaks to Roisin O’Connor about Lauryn Hill, refusing to conform, and how she is still learning new things about herself

(Jen Ewbank)

Therapy has never appealed to Little Simz. The British-Nigerian rapper doesn’t like the idea of “talking to a stranger for an hour”, as she puts it, “and paying them to listen to me”. So she put everything she was feeling into her new album instead.

“I don’t open up to people,” she says. Yet the 25-year-old, born Simbi Ajikawo, is hardly reticent, as we sit by the window of a pub overlooking the Thames – around 20 minutes away from where she grew up in North London – to discuss her superb new album, GREY Area.

“At the time I was writing, I was in a very confusing headspace,” she explains. “Everything was in this weird area, and it was all a shade of grey. Being in your mid-twenties feels like a strange place to be. I’m still discovering myself and things are a lot more complex than they were five years ago. Nothing’s straightforward. I’m peeling off layers as I’m getting older, and finding more and more about myself.”

North London rapper Little Simz

This feeling of being adrift provided the title for her new record. GREY Area is her third studio album, in a career that has also seen the release of five EPs, a mention on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list, praise from Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar, collaborations with everyone from Ghetts to Gorillaz, and a tour with her idol Lauryn Hill. It is an LP that, one hopes, will finally snag her a more mainstream audience and put a stop to the “underrated” tag that precedes most mentions of her name.

“I did go through a phase where I didn’t understand what more I had to do to prove myself,” she recalls. “Sometimes I go on my Twitter and I see comments like ‘Simz is so stepped on, so underrated’, but I can’t keep focusing on the people who don’t wanna f*** with me. I’m over it. I’m just putting my energy into the people who have been supporting, and who get it and understand what I’m trying to do. Maybe that’s just me getting older.”

With her latest singles making it onto Radio 1’s playlist, however, she wonders if it’s more to do with the new music she’s making, and finally catching people’s attention. “I think in hindsight, maybe it was the music,” she says. “But I’m so happy that I didn’t conform. I still stuck to my guns and just made what I wanted to make. And even now, I’m still doing that. It just so happens that I’ve grown a bit, and my sound’s evolved and people get it.”

Over the past four years, Simz has hopped between London and the US, all the while trying to work out where she fits in. What she’s come to realise, she says, is that the answer is no one place.

“I think that’s what makes my music have this international feel,” she says. “I’m from London – this is my home – but I feel as though my music can stretch way beyond. And especially with this album, I think we’ve found a clever way to open it up a lot more.”

It helped to surround herself with a team of people she trusted to make the record, such as her childhood friend Inflo, GREY Area’s producer, whose previous credits include Michael Kiwanuka’s breakthrough album Love & Hate. “We had that chemistry there already,” Simz says, “so getting in the studio was easy.”

There are moments of startling vulnerability on GREY Area, but before you reach them you’re met with the full-throttle assault of “Offence” – where Simz weaponises her formidable lyrical skills (“I’m Jay-Z on a bad day, Shakespeare on my worst days”) before unleashing the war cry: “I said it with my chest and I don’t care who I offend”.

“If you get offended, then that’s on you,” Simz says now. “I’m not doing this cheap stuff just because I’m female.” She wanted this record to have a gritty, Nineties underground vibe, which led to elements like the vocal distortion on “Boss”. She also worked with live musicians rather than samples, which she “didn’t have the luxury of doing” on the 2017 concept album Stillness in Wonderland. She has also included three featured artists, all carefully chosen and vastly different to one another: Jamaican reggae star Chronixx, with whom she last collaborated on the 2016 track “LMPD”; Kiwanuka; and the Swedish electronic band Little Dragon.

Versatility has defined her career in all sorts of ways. In 2010 she acted in the BBC children’s series Spirit Warriors, and later in E4’s Youngers. Last year she revealed that she narrowly missed out on the role of Shuri in Marvel’s Oscar-nominated superhero film Black Panther, which instead went to her friend Letitia Wright (who appears on the artwork for single “Selfish”, in a photo Simz took).

“I’m just happy for Letitia,” Simz says. “She killed it. That’s a win for me, and it’s a win for so many other girls. Those two worlds, acting and music, crossing over is – for me – such a sick thing to see. I think she deserves all that’s coming to her and it’s only gonna go up from here.”

Simz is a role model herself, for many independent artists trying to carve out their own careers, but she doesn’t want to hog too much credit: “I do think people have seen that and been like, ‘If she can do that…’,” she suggests. “But those guys have worked hard and persevered on their own.”

‘I’m so happy I didn’t conform’ (Jen Ewbank)

The best outcome for GREY Area is that it becomes “an integral part of someone’s day-to-day life”, in the same way The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was for her.

“I remember when I first took in that album. I remember where I was in life, hearing it and having goosebumps for the first time, and thinking, ‘Oh, shit, I didn’t know music could do that for you’,” Simz says.

“I didn’t know music could make you cry. And then I got to tell her that’s what it did. Insane. And it was dope to see how you could take those songs that are years old, and still breathe new life into them.” She pauses, glancing out at the Thames and the city beyond. “That’s true artistry, isn’t it? Not being bound to just one thing.”

GREY Area, the new album by Little Simz, is out now. She plays All Points East festival on 24 May