Little Simz (Rapper)

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    The Weeknd’s ‘Avatar’ Anthem, and 8 More New Songs

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    Hear tracks by Rosalía and Cardi B, Saint Levant & Playyard, Little Simz and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.The Weeknd, ‘Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)’The mournful-yet-heroic tone of so many blockbuster soundtrack themes perfectly suits the Weeknd, who has made it his signature to merge pride, weakness, repentance and persistence. “I thought I could protect you from paying for my sins,” he sings, with quivering sincerity, in this song from “Avatar: The Way of Water.” He’s buttressed by a galloping, crashing, trance-adjacent beat and pulsing synthesizers from Swedish House Mafia, along with urgent strings and Balkan-tinged choral harmonies that are probably from the soundtrack’s composer, Simon Franglen. The song makes war, death, loyalty and love converge: “My love for you is greater than their armies and their powers from above,” the Weeknd vows. JON PARELESRosalía featuring Cardi B, ‘Despechá Rmx’Cardi B closes out her year of exuberant guest appearances with one final victory lap. As she did on GloRilla’s “Tomorrow 2” and Kay Flock’s “Shake It,” Cardi plays chameleon on this remix of Rosalía’s breezy “Despechá,” blending in with her surroundings while at the same time showing off her ample stylistic range. She sounds particularly unfettered on the second verse — “Don’t need your drama, don’t need your stress” — shifting into a weightless, breathy register to meet Rosalía’s soft touch. Cardi B saying “motomamis” does not quite top Cardi B saying “coronavirus,” but it comes close! LINDSAY ZOLADZDecisive Pink, ‘Haffmilch Holiday’Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV — two solo artists with a new collaborative project they call Decisive Pink — create a substantive, thoroughly hypnotic track out of what easily could have been a throwaway concept: an ode to their preferred German coffee shop order, the haffmilch. (“I don’t want a Frappuccino drowning in a caramel swirl,” Deradoorian insists; “Neither do I,” NV agrees.) Built on an insistent drum machine beat and prismatic layers of modular synths, the song gradually becomes something more expansive. “I just want silence, I want to play,” the two sing together on the chorus, as if setting a morning intention to cultivate creative exploration and independence throughout the coming day. “Dancing outside on the grass, my own holiday.” ZOLADZBarrie, ‘Doesn’t Really Matter’Barrie asks, politely but pointedly, “Won’t you take your hand off of my back?” as she begins “Doesn’t Really Matter.” Without a drumbeat — just guitars, bass, keyboards and stacked vocal harmonies that look back to the Beach Boys — Barrie pushes away unwanted advances with far more sweetness than they deserve. PARELESSaint Levant & Playyard, ‘I Guess’It’s one thing to go viral. Another thing to set out to go viral. Another thing to desire to go viral. And a whole other thing to make art predicated upon the very concept of virality, that seems to take the essence of shocking shareability as its raison d’être. Such was the case with Saint Levant’s “Very Few Friends” — or, rather, with the 10 or so seconds of it that became a TikTok sensation last month. Here’s Saint Levant sitting in a chair wearing a tank top, looking rakish and unhurried. Flowers (dead?) next to him. Pants tight, necklace dangling. Black Birkenstocks so you know he’s not pressed. His rapping, such as it is — very much in the mold of the Streets, or after-hours Drake, or Barry White intros — is almost comically erotic: intense eye contact, gratuitous detail, oily and damp. Twelve million TikTok views and counting: It did what it was meant to do. (The whole song, rapped in English, French and Arabic, works, too.)“I Guess” is Saint Levant’s follow-up, and he’s doubling down. Joined by Playyard, who rounds out the song with rangy, lithe R&B, Saint Levant remains committed to the bit. In the video, he stares so hard that the camera blushes. “Said I like the way that you talk to me/I like the way you go far for me,” he raps. “I like the way that you look in my eyes and say you wanna get on top of me.” The very light vocal wah-wahs in the background recall the gentleness of the Boyz II Men parts on LL Cool J’s “Hey Lover.” At every turn, there’s a caress waiting, even if it’s a gambit for affection: “I got a lot on my mind, and I gotta share the pain,” Saint Levant avers. The overall effect is viscous, heart-palpitating, spent. JON CARAMANICAFlorence + the Machine featuring Ethel Cain, ‘Morning Elvis’A live recording of the Florence song featuring Ethel Cain, who underscores and amplifies its gothic underbelly. Florence Welch’s singing is slightly more woozy on this version, but Cain moves the song from the realm of theater to the preserve of dreams. CARAMANICACentral Cee, ‘Let Go’The latest entry in the Year of Very Obvious Samples (or Interpolations) is the latest from Central Cee, already a contestant for his clever flip of “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” on “Doja.” “Let Go” doesn’t try quite as hard — it plays on the melancholy Passenger ballad “Let Her Go.” But the lyrics, about failing to get over a woman, are both vividly raunchy and also uncommonly wounded: “I don’t even take my socks off/And I don’t even know why I did it/As soon as I’m finished, I’m gettin’ them dropped off.” CARAMANICALittle Simz, ‘Gorilla’Words are weapons for the English rapper Little Simz, who has just surprise-released an album, “No Thank You.” In “Gorilla,” her delivery — as usual — is utterly deadpan and matter-of-fact, over a track that starts with a horn fanfare, narrows down to a bass-and-drums vamp and brings in a pushy string section, as she calmly asserts her dominance: “My art will be timeless/I don’t do limits.” PARELESAndy Shauf, ‘Catch Your Eye’A dreamlike serenity is undercut with unsettling desperation in “Catch Your Eye,” the latest single from the Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf’s forthcoming album, “Norm.” “Words under my breath float through the ceiling,” he sings softly to an object of unrequited affection, as an airy synthesizer riff evaporates like smoke. “I need to meet you/I need to catch your eye.” ZOLADZ More

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      Little Simz’s Big Moment

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      The British rapper’s laser focus has been trained on fame since she was a child. Now, she’s ready to take it to the next level.LONDON — Long before she was famous here as the rapper Little Simz, Simbiatu Abisola Abiola Ajikawo, known as Simbi, made her debut performance at a local youth club showcase. Ten years old and wearing a red Ecko tracksuit, her hair parted in two bunches, she lunged to the edge of the stage, almost collapsing into her classmates in the front row, and rapped: “In 10 years, I want to be a performer that can entertain, and still remain, to do good things in life.”More than a decade has passed, and Little Simz, now 27, is living up to her ambitions. Her fourth album, “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,” is due on Sept. 3. As an actor, she has starred in British TV shows, including Ronan Bennet’s breakout hit, “Top Boy.” She is an active member of her community in Islington, North London, doing good through charitable acts she “doesn’t feel the need to be loud about,” she said.A master storyteller who raps with wisdom and heart, Little Simz has a narrative style that’s been likened to Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, both fans of her work. Where she was once just “your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper,” she is becoming a household name here in her own right.In 2019, the grime star Stormzy shouted out Little Simz as an up-and-comer to watch during his headlining set at the Glastonbury Festival. That same year, her third studio LP, “Grey Area,” a grooving and eclectic rumination on her early 20s, was named best British album at the NME Awards.But now, poised to release her latest album, she feels on the cusp of something really big, she said in a recent interview, as she lounged gracefully on a restaurant sofa in King’s Cross, London, as though it were her own. “Everyone has their moment,” she said, “and I think ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ will be mine.”“I’m still young, innit?” she added. “But I know that’s where I’m heading.”Kadeem Clarke, a frequent collaborator who directs Little Simz’s live performances, said her determination was unshakable. “She has a vision, and we don’t even know where it comes from, or how it’s going to get done, but she does it,” he said. “She will not take her eye off it.”That laser focus has been a hallmark since Little Simz’s North London childhood. Her house was crowded, noisy and alive, she recalled: Her mother played Afrobeats and reggae, her sisters garage and grime, her brothers rap and hip-hop.In her bedroom, Little Simz listened to Busta Rhymes, Nas and Biggie Smalls, and dreamed of being like them, she said: a rap legend who spoke to their listener, not at them. She wrote their lyrics out in notebooks, trying to work out how the artists turned stubborn words into something slick and percussive. The natural and chatty approach of Biggie Smalls, in particular, drew her in: “If you took away his flow and instrumental, he could just be talking to you.”She said that she had “struggled to articulate myself in conversation,” but that her own rapping, which she thought of as a dialogue with herself, helped make sense of her thoughts. “And then, I even question it — like, why do I think that?”In rapping, she said, she found the thing that set her apart from her peers. “Everyone knew me as that girl who rapped,” she explained. “I’m the youngest of four, and my older siblings knew everyone, so I was always, ‘T’s little sister,’ or ‘Fem’s little sister.’ Then other people would find out that I did music, and it’d be another layer, like, ‘Aw, you know T’s sister raps?’”Claire Hough and Little Simz shooting the video for her new song “Introvert.”Tamiym CaderAt 14, Little Simz began making sacrifices for the hobby she was determined to turn into a career: She stayed in when her friends went out together on weekends, saving her pocket money for studio equipment. Her bedroom became a shrine to her musical idols, with posters of Lauryn Hill, Nas and Jay-Z, and a photo of herself placed above them. On a piece of cardboard, she wrote an affirmation in all caps: “Dream big! Family is everything! God is love! Be great!”That same year, she landed an acting role on a BBC children’s adventure show, “Spirit Warriors.” Later, at 17, Little Simz was cast in “Youngers,” a children’s drama depicting a group of London teenagers hoping to make it big in music. Life began to imitate art when she formed a group called Space Age with other young musicians and artists she met at EC1 Music Project, another London community program. The crew became a kind of extended family, Little Simz said, playing instruments, adding vocals and producing visual art for the mixtapes she began recording.Tilla Arcé, a close friend who also rapped in Space Age, said, “Simz always surrounded herself with real people,” but noted she was more inclined to open up in her music than in social settings. “When she’s performing, it’s her space to let go and be immersed in pure emotion and expression,” he said. “Simbi the person is a lot more to herself, but because I’ve known her as a virtuoso, I understand the moments she taps into Little Simz.”Space Age’s members joined in on Little Simz’s debut album “A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons,” which she released when she was 20: Arcé recorded additional vocals, and his brother, Josh, helmed the production on several tracks. The album is a reflection on fame and its effects on the human spirit, with Little Simz adopting new personas on different songs, each one a character at a different stage of their journey to celebrity. How about that as a statement of intent?With the release of “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,” Little Simz said she was ready to move to the next level: “There’s just something in the air.” Featuring interludes voiced by Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in “The Crown,” the 19-track album is an odyssey through Little Simz’s inner conflicts and joys. Bringing together influences including lackadaisical neo-soul and ’80s electro funk, it has the scope and spectacle of a West End production.Little Simz recorded the album in Los Angeles, working with Dean Josiah Cover, 33, who produces under the name InFlo. He is, like the members of Space Age, both a childhood friend and a persistent influence on her music. The two have been collaborating since Little Simz was a dream-driven teen, in 2008.“When I listen to the stuff we made back then, it sounds almost like ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,’” she said. Both artists’ tastes and sound palettes are far-ranging, taking in hip-hop, jazz, R&B, punk and soul. “We literally have a brother-sister relationship,” Little Simz said. “I annoy him, he annoys me. But we make great music together,” she said, describing their creative process as a safe space: “Whatever you feel, it’s between these four walls, and if it goes on the record then it does, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Shout, scream, cry, whatever it is.”With all that space for self-examination, Little Simz’s ambitions didn’t go without self- scrutiny: “Why the desperate need to be remembered? Everybody knowing what you’ve done, how far you’ve come?” Little Simz raps on “Standing Ovation,” one of the new album’s tracks.In the interview, she said she was willing to sacrifice a lot for the big time she saw coming, not least her privacy. “If I didn’t do music, no one would know who I am,” she said. The comfort of invisibility appealed to her introverted side, but she has struck a bargain: “I’m not going to be nameless. I want my music to be known, I want my music to be heard, I want to tell my story.”But fame isn’t the be-all and end-all, Little Simz added. “I’m trying to be my greatest self in all aspects of my life, and not just music,” she said. Echoing the song she performed as a 10-year-old, she reiterated her purpose: “Not only am I trying to be a great artist and performer, I’m trying to be a great sister, friend, daughter, auntie.” More

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      The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s Bouncy Plea, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Little Simz, Nathy Peluso, Courtney Barnett,Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.The Kid Laroi featuring Justin Bieber, ‘Stay’Bracingly effective, hyper-slick new wave/pop-punk hybridization from the Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber, “Stay” is about expecting more from a partner than you’re capable of giving. They both sound aptly desperate and defensive, a familiar approach from Laroi and a sneaky stretch from Bieber, who still injects some falsetto tenderness into his icy pleas. “Stay” is a more effective pairing than the two had on “Unstable,” from Bieber’s most recent album, on which he sounded as if he was jogging while Laroi sprinted. JON CARAMANICAThe Kondi Band featuring Mariama, ‘She Doesn’t Love You’Kondi Band is an electronic concoction rooted in Sierra Leone. The kondi is a 15-pronged thumb piano played by the Sierra Leonean musician Sorie Kondi, with production by DJ Chief Boima (an American whose family is from Sierra Leone), the English producer Will LV (a.k.a. Will Horrocks) and, on this song, the voice of a songwriter from Sierra Leone, Mariama Jalloh. The song is propelled by multiple layers of Sorie Kondi’s plinking thumb-piano riffs and grainy call-and-response vocals in Krio (Sierra Leonean Creole); midway through, Mariama airily delivers a reminder about consent: “It’s her mind, her body, her rules/If she doesn’t love you there’s nothing you can do.” JON PARELESLittle Simz, ‘I Love You, I Hate You’The Nigerian-English rapper Lil Simz keeps her voice calm and steely as she grapples with her relationship with her biological father, who’s “in my DNA” — she’s seen Polaroid photos — but whom she barely knows: “Is you a sperm donor or a dad to me?” The emotions that buffet her are in the track, produced by Inflo, with orchestral and choral swells, a sputtering funk beat and a male voice singing the title. She’s wrestling with her own feelings, trying to empathize and reaching for forgiveness; it’s complicated. PARELESBLK presents Juvenile, Mannie Fresh and Mia X, ‘Vax That Thang Up’Ah yes, you remember this classic, from the album “400 Degreez (Is What Your Temperature Will Be if You Get Covid-19 So Please Get Vaccinated).” CARAMANICAZuchu, ‘Nyumba Ndogo’What will happen when African musicians latch onto hyperpop? “Nyumba Ndogo,” from the Tanzanian singer and songwriter Zuchu, hints at the possibilities. It’s thin, speedy, synthetic, Auto-Tuned — and irresistible. PARELESmazie, ‘Dumb Dumb’The songwriter who lowercases herself as mazie folds multiple levels of ironic self-consciousness into her songs. She sings in a little-girl voice, and she starts “Dumb Dumb” with the sounds of kiddie instruments — ukulele, toy piano — before surreally stacking up keyboards, voices and harps and declaring, “Everyone is dumb, la la la la la la la.” It’s a song about misinformation, gullibility and incredulity; she wrote it the day after the insurrection at the Capitol. PARELESCourtney Barnett, ‘Rae Street’Courtney Barnett previews an album due in November — “Things Take Time, Take Time” — with another of her deadpan, steady-strummed songs that find large lessons in mundane observations. In “Rae Street” she chronicles her neighbors: parents, children, repair people and dogs, having an ordinary day. Behind the normalcy, there’s a wary undercurrent: “Time is money, and money is no man’s friend,” she sings, and, later, “You seem so stable, but you’re just hanging on.” Calm doesn’t mean contentment. PARELESAngel Olsen, ‘Gloria’There’s no point in a cover version that doesn’t transform the original song. Angel Olsen does just that with her version of the Laura Branigan hit “Gloria,” the first track from her coming album of 1980s songs, “Aisles.” While Branigan’s 1982 “Gloria” had pumping synthesizers and a perky vocal, Olsen paid attention to the lyrics. It’s a song about a desolate, lonely woman on the verge of a breakdown, or perhaps already having one: “Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?” Olsen’s version is blearily slow, thickened with distorted keyboard chords and grunting cellos; this “Gloria” is mired, not triumphal. PARELESgglum. ‘Glad Ur Gone’Clouds of vocal harmonies float prettily; a beat bustles; keyboards throb in warm major chords. None of it quite conceals the rancor of “Glad Ur Gone,” as gglum — the songwriter Ella Smoker — sings about how clingy and manipulative an ex can be. PARELESJ.D. Allen, ‘Mother’Jon Irabagon, ‘KC Blues’J.D. Allen and Jon Irabagon, two standard-bearing tenor saxophonists, have new solo-sax albums that were forged in the solitude of lockdown. Irabagon, 41, spent much of 2020 living with extended family in South Dakota, and he often slipped off to the outskirts of Black Hills National Forest, where he spent hours revisiting the Charlie Parker songbook en plein-air with a recorder on. He’s released those recordings as “Bird With Streams” (yes, it’s a pun). Playful as ever but also luxuriously patient, his take on “K.C. Blues” is a feast of smeared tones and little open spaces. Allen, 48, went into a Cincinnati studio to capture the 13 tracks on “Queen City,” but he kept things spare, treating the process as an extension of the soul-searching he’d done in the early days of lockdown. “Mother,” an Allen original, starts with a three-note pattern that spins almost into a drone before he leaps off into free improvisation, zagging and curling and, later, painfully scraping his notes, as if to pry them open. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLONathy Peluso, ‘Mafiosa’The Argentine songwriter Nathy Peluso is ready to seize power as a woman in “Mafiosa,” vowing (in Spanish), “May bad men fear me.” She’s backed by a sinewy, old-school salsa groove with horn-section muscle: playful and teasing, but not to be crossed. PARELESMaluma, ‘Sobrio’A gentle song befitting Maluma’s gentle voice, “Sobrio” is an unhurried and lovely tale of a man only able to declare his heart after a few drinks. There’s nothing anguished about Maluma’s meanderings, though — rather, the slackness of the rhythm, and of his lightly slurry anguish, makes for a compellingly smooth confessional. CARAMANICASufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, ‘Reach Out’Sufjan Stevens has been mightily productive during the pandemic year, with songs, instrumentals and now a collaboration. Acoustic picking defines “Reach Out,” from the album “A Beginner’s Mind” by Stevens and the songwriter Angelo De Augustine, which is due in September — and based, they say, on watching movies. Fans of Stevens’s largely acoustic album “Carrie and Lowell” will appreciate “Reach Out,” which doesn’t hide the squeaks of hands moving up strings. In close harmony, they sing about memory and healing, insisting, “the pain restores you.” PARELESSamara Joy, ‘It Only Happens Once’At 21, the vocalist Samara Joy has been approaching the jazz spotlight since she won the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. The close precision and frothy power of her voice stand out immediately, and on her self-titled debut album, so does the depth of her comfort within the jazz tradition. “It Only Happens Once” is a rarely played tune, best known for Nat King Cole’s dreamy 1943 version, but she tucks right into it, as if she’s been singing the song her whole life. RUSSONELLO More