Watch: Little Simz perform ‘Heart On Fire’ on US TV
Little Simz most recent album No Thank You arrived in the December deluge of End of the Year lists, but it quickly became a firm favourite of the year, and charted in my personal top 10 albums of 2022.
Simz was on Colbert on US TV this week, performing the album highlight ‘Heart On Fire’ with a full band and backing vocalists.
Watch:
A surprise December release from Little Simz who has things she wants to address, and releasing an album during the End of the Year list cycle is one way to signpost how done you are with the machinations of the music industry.
No Thank You is a course corrective, a get-shit-off-your-chest moment. Longtime producer Inflo with his band SAULT have showed Simz a way forward for her own art – drop albums on your own terms without losing the scope of what you’re trying to create. Case in point: the production on this is elegant and orchestral, possible made in the same room, at the same time as SAULT’s five albums they dropped in November this year.
No Thank You benefits from being looser and less grand than last year’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, with Simz detailing how wayward her career focus had become on ‘My Heart’s On’ and ‘Angel’ (“Yeah, I refuse to be on a slave ship / Give me all my masters and lower your wages”), dipping into generational trauma, set to shuffling marching drum beat on ‘X’ and mental heath on ‘Broken’ ( “Man, this week has been tough / I’ve been saying it for a year”).
“Fuck rules and everything that’s traditional,” is the mantra.
