Music
Learn the essentials about the articulate and very fast-rising London rapper.
What Little Simz may lack in stature, she more than makes up for in talent. She’s so fierce on the mic it’s easy to forget she’s just 21.
A North London MC with Nigerian roots, Simz (real name Simbi Ajikawo) is rising up the game on her own terms. She’s been on her mixtape grind since she was 16, releasing at least one a year, with Jay-Z’s Life+Times blog premiering her 2013 BLANK CANVAS mix.
Since then, the co-signs have just kept rolling in. Kendrick Lamar was singing her praises when he appeared on Mista Jam in June 2015, while she teamed up with his Black Hippy homeboy ScHoolboy Q for the UK leg of his Oxymoron tour the previous year. But let’s not get it twisted: Simz isn’t waiting on big-name co-signs or any other kind of industry help – she’s out to do this on her own terms. Here’s a glimpse inside the mind of this singular artist.
Watch the moody video to Little Simz’s Dead Body in the player below.
People think I’m from East London sometimes – I spend my days in the east, so I guess that’s what it is. But I’m from North London – Essex Road to be exact – and I feel like you can tell that. It’s an influence on me, definitely.
I was crazy young when I first heard hip-hop. I mean, like seven or so. It was Missy Elliott, I think. I know I was infatuated with her videos. I used to dance at that time so I wanted to be in her videos. And from that point on I just fell in love with hip-hop. Then I got into Lauryn Hill and I got more in-depth with it, Tupac, Nas, Jay-Z… and then I started making my own music...
My youth club, St Mary’s on Upper Street, was very influential on me. Just because it was where it all began for me, it was like a second home. It was somewhere to go after school instead of just hanging around on the roads, causing trouble or whatever. We had dance, the gym for the boys, cooking classes, we used to go on trips. It was like a big family.
I like acting a lot but if it’s a choice between that and music, it’s music all the way. With acting, like on [UK TV drama] Youngers, I had to put my life on hold and I’m not sure how much I like that! But when it's my music it's my special thing I can do what I want, I can live and I can talk about life through it; I don't really have to put my music on hold, I can just go about my everyday life and have experiences and have things to talk about. So that's what separates the two for me.
Touring with ScHoolboy Q was mad. It was my first tour and to be doing it on that scale was live – I followed him to Dublin, Glasgow, Birmingham, two London shows… it has definitely opened a lot of doors for me.
Even before I got that that co-sign from Kendrick I was a fan of his work. What he’s done, what he’s achieved… I love his music as a listener, that hasn’t changed.
I said on Twitter that I was “looking like Lady Heisenberg” in my Dead Body video. That’s to do with the slightly grim subject matter – it’s a homeless man's perspective, because this whole album is written through different people's points of view and different characters come into play. It's a bit of a mind-f**k!
I’m not doing all [my music] on my own label as some big “f**k you”, firing shots at anybody. It’s just that I haven’t met a label yet whom I can trust to hand my work over to. This is all just way too precious to me. I guess I’m just a control-freak when it comes to my music.
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