Little Simz, Lotus: an existential crisis never sounded so gripping
There is nothing fragrant nor floral about Lotus, the sixth album from Britain's most gifted rapper, Little Simz. Veering wildly between defiance and introspection, the overriding mood is dark, and the tone is tough, with something bruised and battered at its core.
It opens with the hypnotically fierce blast of Thief, a propulsive post-punk take on a jazzy sixties spy theme, with Simz delivering a vicious character assassination in a machine-gun blast of snarling rhymes. It's a sensational, shiver-inducing intro, but its anger is fuelled by a sense of personal hurt that lingers throughout the album, and even Lotus's most joyously upbeat tracks (Flood, Young, Free and Lion) can't quite shake it.
A profound sense of existential crisis underpins Lotus, expressed most unequivocally amidst the jazzy piano spaces of Lonely, in which Simz confesses 'I don't even know who I'm meant to be anymore.' Distinctive British soul singer Sampha serenades her despondency in sweet, sad tones. His voice is also prominent on sombre end track, Blue, which finds Simz questioning how people cope with life's sense of perennial injustice, noting 'the truth is God still loves your enemies' amidst a cascade of rhymes including cemetery, identity and 'white supremacy.' It is simultaneously impressive and depressing.
At 31, Simbiatu Ajikawo should be on top of the world, yet we find her making the time-worn confession 'it's lonely at the top.' Lauded by critics and peers, she has imperious lyrical skills and an adventurous musical imagination. She has won Mercury and Brit Awards and shown herself to be a fine actor in Netflix UK crime drama Top Boy. This month, Simz will be the 30th curator of the Southbank Centre's prestigious Meltdown Festival.
It is odd then to note that she has never actually had a hit single, and only one of her albums has been top 5 in the UK (2021's masterful Sometimes I Might Be Introvert). She cancelled a US tour in 2022, sacked her long-serving manager (inspiring that year's darkly intense album No Thank You) and is currently suing her former producer, Dean 'Inflo' Cover, seeking £1.7 million in damages for unpaid loans (Cover's legal team have acknowledged the debt). It is honestly not hard to work out who is the intended subject of the most vitriolic put downs on Lotus, or why Simz might be experiencing a sense of crisis.
Jazz producer Miles Clinton James has taken over the role of chief collaborator, dialling up a jazziness that has long underpinned Simz' oeuvre, a development unlikely to correct her status as a no-hit wonder. Still, it sounds fantastic and an array of super talented voices (including Obongjayar, Michael Kiwanuka, Lydia Kitto, Miraa May and Moonchild Sanelly) all add distinctive flavours. Simz herself brings a greater range of tonal and emotional depths to her formerly sometimes robotic flow, which is a welcome development.
Lotus is an absorbing and powerfully honest album. But whilst the title flower symbolises rebirth and enlightenment in many cultures, here it seems more suggestive of something beautiful blooming in a very dark place indeed.
Best New Songs
By Poppie Platt
Addison Rae, New York
The TikTok influencer-turned-pop's hottest and most hyped new star finally releases her self-titled debut album today. Joining the deliciously addictive, Noughties-influenced likes of singles Diet Pepsi and Fame is a Gun comes this hazy club banger about the Louisiana girl's new life in the Big Apple.
ADMT, Come Along
Having got his start on YouTube, the Yorkshire singer sets himself firmly on the path to being Gen Z's answer to Ed Sheeran – think personal lyrics, spat out delivery and catchy acoustic hooks – on this track about loved ones who drifted away.
Madonna, Skin (The Collaboration Remix Edit)
The superstar's long-rumoured, equally long-awaited Ray of Light remix album Veronica Electronica is officially on its way (set your Spotify reminders for July 25 now). Get in the mood with this stomping electro remix of her 1998 classic.
Sabrina Carpenter, Manchild
Ahead of her headline slot at Primavera Sound in Barcelona tonight, the reigning queen of bubblegum pop returns with an infectious new single taking down a 'Manchild' ex who won't leave her alone or get a grip ('I like my men all incompetent'). Thinly veiled dig at ex Barry Keoghan, surely?
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The Guardian
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- The Guardian
Sly Stone was a trailblazer who changed the course of music – and an icon of both hope and pain
Even though he recorded three of funk's most foundational albums – four if you include 1970's Greatest Hits, as flawless a good time as pop ever delivered – Sly Stone's subsequent fall from grace was perceived as a grave betrayal of his talent. That Stone's unravelling was so conspicuous – his drug abuse apparent in every wasted chat show appearance, his infallible hit-machine waning after his Family Stone became estranged – only exacerbated the sting of this loss. But Stone's imperial era lasted almost a decade and delivered a discography that remains the acme of funk. He changed the course of pop and reconfigured the structure and essence of dance music, multiple times. He was an icon of hope, of pain, of pride. He was Icarus, for sure. But when it mattered, boy did he fly. On arrival, his brilliance was so audacious it was hard to believe it could ever be exhausted. He seemed to tease this himself on 1968's Life, promising, 'You don't have to come down!' Perhaps this confidence sprang from his knowledge that he'd already stumbled before he'd soared. The Family Stone's 1967 debut album A Whole New Thing – restlessly and inventively mashing psychedelia, soul, funk and rock into, well, a whole new thing – had been too much too soon, and baffled audiences. But the following year's Dance to the Music simplified the formula and brought new focus, its title track and the 12-minute Dance to the Medley sounding a call to funk the world couldn't resist. Soon, Sly was everywhere. There he was with his sister Rose, ice-cool but wholesome, sweeping into the audience of The Ed Sullivan Show and getting an America riven by racism, Vietnam and the generation gap to spell out 'L-O-V-E' together in their front rooms. There he was at Woodstock, glitter-daubed and wearing stack-heeled boots like they were ballet pumps, so wired and righteous the subsequent split-screen concert movie could barely contain him. A slew of killer singles sketched out Sly's polymorphous concept, but it was 1969's Stand!, his first perfect album, that gave it space to breathe. The title track was an anthem of Black power that could be sung by anybody, with a funk breakdown no body could resist. Everyday People was a hymn to the integrational dream the multi-racial, multi-gender Family Stone Call Me N*****, Whitey put voice to the resentments sparking uprisings across the nation. The deep funk epic Sex Machine was the source from whence Miles Davis's 70s electric output later sprang. The year closed out with a further triumph: the standalone single Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), on which the Family Stone's Larry Graham reinvented bass guitar by slapping and plucking his strings with percussive fury. This was heavy street music, Sly's homilies of peace and hope replaced by something more uncertain, more confessional. Stone had signalled the wind-change that July with Hot Fun in the Summertime, a candy floss cloud whose doo-wop croon doubled as an account of a summer torn up by protests and riots. But Thank You made the disquiet explicit, and detailed the riot going one within Stone, as he wrestled with the devil, ruminating that, 'Dyin' young is hard to take / Selling out is harder.' These were the stakes for Stone in 1969, facing down death and failure. Lesser artists would choke under such pressure; instead, Stone reached for his masterpiece. But the very height of his brilliance was itself symptomatic of what would bring him down. 1971's There's A Riot Goin' On was recorded as the Family Stone were drifting apart, Sly hanging out and getting so high with muso mates at his home studio over long, hazy sessions where no-one was sure who played what, or if they even played at all. Loose, funky chaos reigned. 'We never planned anything – I just walked in and saw a microphone there and a guitar, and started playing with him,' Stone's friend, soul legend Bobby Womack, told me in 2012. 'There was a riot goin' on, alright – it was at Sly's house!' On Riot…, much of what had previously defined a Sly Stone record – the brightness, the hooks, the hope – bled away, in their place a disorientatingly murky production, the tape itself disintegrating under the strain of compulsive overdubs. On the album's chart-topping hit, Family Affair, Stone's mush-mouthed croon distorts in the mix; you can't make out the words, but his warm, wise crackle spells out what he's saying. Elsewhere, his incisive gift for aphorisms remained intact, but now focused on a darkening world; Runnin' Away and (You Caught Me) Smilin' were as perfect as any pop song Stone ever wrote, but their sunshine hooks were stained with sadness. And a rerun of Thank You, now titled Thank You For Talkin' To Me Africa, slowed Graham's formerly propulsive bass riff to a swampy slog, the chorus chants now recast as ghostly murmurs. The devil, it seemed, was now winning. Stone began to haunt his studio day and night, which was good because he was now habitually missing gigs. He kept overdubbing and remixing 1973's Fresh even after it had hit the shelves, paring away more and more instrumentation in search of skeletal funk perfection. Skin I'm In found Stone more at ease than he had sounded for years; If You Want Me To Stay was Stone finding peace in self-acceptance, a love song that doubled as a warning to take him as he was ('For me to stay here / I got to be me'). But the chaos surrounding Stone was increasing, much of it self-inflicted. The Family Stone disbanded following 1974's Small Talk, often cited as where Sly's genius left the stage. In fact, the album is located in a similar pocket to Fresh: the songs aren't as strong and it leans too hard on new Family member, violinist Sid Page, but the title track's squelchy funk is sparse and electrifying, while the Beastie Boys loved Loose Booty enough to lift its chorus for their Shadrach. The sleeve featured Stone with young son Sylvester Jr and wife Kathleen Silva in familial embrace; they'd married onstage at Madison Square Garden that June, and separate two years later after Stone's dog mauled Sly Jr. 'You don't have to come down,' Sly had sung back in 1968. Actually, of course you do. The slide began slowly – his 1975 solo album High On You was worth the price of entry for the synth-driven title track and the brilliantly discordant funk of Crossword Puzzle and the sinful howls of Who Do You Love? alone. But there's little to love on 1976's Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back, purportedly a Family Stone reunion but, in truth, as much a one-man band as the one Stone portrayed on the hokey sleeve. A move to Warner Bros for 1979's inaccurately titled album Back On The Right Track delivered a last hit, Remember Who You Are, which tapped Stone's magic one final time. But by his farewell, 1982's Ain't But The One Way, the well had run dry; its 34 minutes drag. Then Sly pretty much disappeared, his life engulfed by crack cocaine, legal disputes and homelessness. He would occasionally resurface, stoking hopes for a final glorious act in the saga, the comeback record his legacy deserved. But, as Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson's documentary Sly Lives – subtitled 'the burden of Black genius' – argues, that was too much to ask of Sly Stone, who'd already given so much, and had earned the right to fade away and find his peace. As he sang over half-a-century earlier in Stand!: 'In the end, you'll still be you / one that's done all the things you set out to do.' His burdens had brought him down to Earth, hard and for good. But there were few who had flown so high.
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