Latest news with #Thief
The Guardian
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Militsioner – finally a game that asks, is it illegal to use an apple to bribe a giant policeman?
Planning is half the fun in immersive sims. Titles such as Thief and Dishonored drop players into clockwork worlds where there are emails or letters to be read, vents to wriggle through, and desperate situations to overcome with smarts and social engineering as much as sheer violence. You could argue that all that's been missing from the genre until now is a colossal policeman whose lanky body rises hundreds of feet into the sky, and who can look down at you and see absolutely everything you're doing. Luckily, the new game from the Russian developer Tallboys is here to fix that. In Militsioner, you have been arrested for some manner of nebulous crime and must now leave town as quickly as you can. Bribe the ticketmaster at the railway? Break a window to create a distraction? All classic immersive sim solutions. Sadly, there's that policeman to deal with first, a melancholic but watchful giant who towers over the ravaged urban surroundings even when sat down with his hands resting on his knees. This giant defines Militsioner. He's both a mechanic to toy with, depending on whether you want to flatter him or distract him, and a stark piece of visual brilliance that means you'll never mistake this particular game for anything other than a paranoid immersive adventure. Even so, Tallboy's director and game designer Dmitry Shevchenko explains that the project had been in development for a good six months before the policeman even turned up. 'I remember watching an interview about the development of Thief: The Dark Project,' Shevchenko says. 'We were really struck by the idea of giving the player a clear role, almost like a profession. That resonated with us. Around the same time, we were also thinking about giants as a theme.' These ideas converged when Shevchenko remembered a painting by the Russian digital artist Andrey Surnov, depicting a giant traffic policeman sitting in a field. 'It just clicked,' Shevchenko laughs. 'That image perfectly captured both the player's role and their antagonist: criminal and policeman.' The rest of Militsioner fell into place quite quickly after that. The game explores a cruel, totalitarian world that pits the individual against an overwhelming system. Yet it also plucks at more personal, even intimate threads. Is it illegal to bribe a giant policeman by offering them an apple? Is it illegal to try to date them? To pull this stuff off, Militsioner employs a kind of Tamagotchi system to monitor the specific internal worlds of all the non-player characters, that giant policeman among them. 'We play with the classic immersive sim design pillar, where encounters can be approached through talking, sneaking or shooting,' Shevchenko says, and suggests that the moods add what he refers to as an additional layer, inspired by The Sims. 'It's the emotional states of characters,' he says. 'Their moods become a core part of the systemic gameplay.' Sneaking into another character's house and getting caught might send them into a panic, for example, which will change their dialogue options and, by extension, how you can interact with them. 'This creates a deeply interconnected system where every action feeds into a web of reactions,' Shevchenko says. 'It adds a new dimension to problem-solving and storytelling.' All of this is being expanded on by a process of rigorous player testing, where the team at Tallboys not only asks players what they did in a game but what they wanted to do but could not. This is where the idea of trying to date the policeman came from. 'Players wanted to explore that side of the relationship,' Shevchenko says. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion The product of a Russian development team that has spoken out about the invasion of Ukraine, Militsioner is deeply political. It's also quietly literary. Alongside that other towering and melancholic figure Kafka, Shevchenko says the team has been influenced by the works of the Strugatsky brothers, who are most famous for the sci-fi dystopia Roadside Picnic. 'I keep trying to capture the feeling [of their books],' Shevchenko says. 'I love how they approach abstract settings and describe characters, particularly in The Snail on the Slope, with its surreal depiction of the directorate and the system around it.' Dig deeper and there's also the hint of another giant of Russian literature, Nikolai Gogol, whose stories pick at hierarchy and the manifold perversities of power in a playful, strikingly game-like way. His antiheroes, including a man whose nose leaves his face and goes on to greater social status than him and another who wants to cheat his way to riches buying up the ownership of dead serfs, would probably be quite at home living in a town where a giant policeman sat in the town square, sadly taking everything in. Militsioner is being developed for PC, release date is TBC
The Guardian
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Militsioner – finally a game that asks, is it illegal to use an apple to bribe a giant policeman?
Planning is half the fun in immersive sims. Titles such as Thief and Dishonored drop players into clockwork worlds where there are emails or letters to be read, vents to wriggle through, and desperate situations to overcome with smarts and social engineering as much as sheer violence. You could argue that all that's been missing from the genre until now is a colossal policeman whose lanky body rises hundreds of feet into the sky, and who can look down at you and see absolutely everything you're doing. Luckily, the new game from the Russian developer Tallboys is here to fix that. In Militsioner, you have been arrested for some manner of nebulous crime and must now leave town as quickly as you can. Bribe the ticketmaster at the railway? Break a window to create a distraction? All classic immersive sim solutions. Sadly, there's that policeman to deal with first, a melancholic but watchful giant who towers over the ravaged urban surroundings even when sat down with his hands resting on his knees. This giant defines Militsioner. He's both a mechanic to toy with, depending on whether you want to flatter him or distract him, and a stark piece of visual brilliance that means you'll never mistake this particular game for anything other than a paranoid immersive adventure. Even so, Tallboy's director and game designer Dmitry Shevchenko explains that the project had been in development for a good six months before the policeman even turned up. 'I remember watching an interview about the development of Thief: The Dark Project,' Shevchenko says. 'We were really struck by the idea of giving the player a clear role, almost like a profession. That resonated with us. Around the same time, we were also thinking about giants as a theme.' These ideas converged when Shevchenko remembered a painting by the Russian digital artist Andrey Surnov, depicting a giant traffic policeman sitting in a field. 'It just clicked,' Shevchenko laughs. 'That image perfectly captured both the player's role and their antagonist: criminal and policeman.' The rest of Militsioner fell into place quite quickly after that. The game explores a cruel, totalitarian world that pits the individual against an overwhelming system. Yet it also plucks at more personal, even intimate threads. Is it illegal to bribe a giant policeman by offering them an apple? Is it illegal to try to date them? To pull this stuff off, Militsioner employs a kind of Tamagotchi system to monitor the specific internal worlds of all the non-player characters, that giant policeman among them. 'We play with the classic immersive sim design pillar, where encounters can be approached through talking, sneaking or shooting,' Shevchenko says, and suggests that the moods add what he refers to as an additional layer, inspired by The Sims. 'It's the emotional states of characters,' he says. 'Their moods become a core part of the systemic gameplay.' Sneaking into another character's house and getting caught might send them into a panic, for example, which will change their dialogue options and, by extension, how you can interact with them. 'This creates a deeply interconnected system where every action feeds into a web of reactions,' Shevchenko says. 'It adds a new dimension to problem-solving and storytelling.' All of this is being expanded on by a process of rigorous player testing, where the team at Tallboys not only asks players what they did in a game but what they wanted to do but could not. This is where the idea of trying to date the policeman came from. 'Players wanted to explore that side of the relationship,' Shevchenko says. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion The product of a Russian development team that has spoken out about the invasion of Ukraine, Militsioner is deeply political. It's also quietly literary. Alongside that other towering and melancholic figure Kafka, Shevchenko says the team has been influenced by the works of the Strugatsky brothers, who are most famous for the sci-fi dystopia Roadside Picnic. 'I keep trying to capture the feeling [of their books],' Shevchenko says. 'I love how they approach abstract settings and describe characters, particularly in The Snail on the Slope, with its surreal depiction of the directorate and the system around it.' Dig deeper and there's also the hint of another giant of Russian literature, Nikolai Gogol, whose stories pick at hierarchy and the manifold perversities of power in a playful, strikingly game-like way. His antiheroes, including a man whose nose leaves his face and goes on to greater social status than him and another who wants to cheat his way to riches buying up the ownership of dead serfs, would probably be quite at home living in a town where a giant policeman sat in the town square, sadly taking everything in. Militsioner is being developed for PC, release date is TBC
Los Angeles Times
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The neon-streaked L.A. of ‘Drive', plus the week's best movies
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. The new 'Superman' is in theaters this weekend, written and directed by James Gunn and starring David Corenswet in the title role, with Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as villain Lex Luthor. This film is seen as the first salvo of a relaunch of the DC Universe of characters for Warner Bros. and so there is more riding on it than just the outcome of this one film. There are several new characters introduced in the film, perhaps intended to topline future titles of their own. Samantha Masunaga got into the history of the Superman character onscreen and took a look at what this might mean for DC's future. 'DC has been playing catch-up with Marvel,' said Arlen Schumer, a comic book and pop culture historian. 'They've given James Gunn the keys to the DC kingdom and said, 'You've got to restore Superman. He's our greatest icon, but nobody knows what to do with him. We think you know what to do with him.'' The film has an impulsive sincerity that can be endearing. As Amy Nicholson wrote in her review, 'Fine, I'll say it. I need Superman. I'm craving a hero who stands for truth and justice whether he's rescuing cats or reporting the news. Cheering for such idealism used to feel corny; all the cool, caped crusaders had ethical kinks. Even his recent movies have seemed a little embarrassed by the guy, scuffing him up with cynicism. I'm with the latest incarnation of Superman (David Corenswet) when he tells Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) that having a big heart is 'the real punk rock.'' Amy added, 'This isn't quite the heart-soaring 'Superman' I wanted. But these adventures wise him up enough that I'm curious to explore where the saga takes him next. Still, I left chewing over how comic book movies can be so popular and prescient, and yet people who've grown up rooting against characters like Lex Luthor cheer them on in the real world. Maybe Gunn can answer that in a sequel. Or maybe our stubborn myopia is what this Superman means when he says, 'I screw up all the time but that is being human.'' On Saturday the Academy Museum will show Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 romantic thriller 'Drive' in 35mm. Composer Cliff Martinez will be there in person. The film is showing as part of the series 'Bathed in Light: Saturated Colors in Cinema,' which will also see screenings of Michael Mann's 'Thief,' Walter Hill's 'Streets of Fire' in 70mm (with the director in person), Harmony Korine's 'Spring Breakers,' Barry Jenkins' 'Moonlight,' Pablo Larraín's 'Ema,' Gaspar Noé's 'Enter the Void,' Hype Williams' 'Belly' and more. A Los Angeles getaway driver, known only as Driver (played with taciturn cool by Ryan Gosling), falls for his neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and soon becomes involved in a caper trying to help out her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) that sets him afoul of a local crime boss (Albert Brooks). 'Drive' won the directing prize when it premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and became something of a cultural sensation at the time of its release, thanks in part to the hypnotic use of dreamy synthesizer music. (And remember Gosling's scorpion jacket?) In his original review of the film Kenneth Turan wrote, ''Drive' is a Los Angeles neo-noir, a neon-lit crime story made with lots of visual style. It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal. … Impeccably shot by Newton Thomas Sigel, 'Drive' always looks dressed to kill. Making fine use of Los Angeles locations, particularly the lonely downtown streets around the L.A. River, 'Drive' has a slick, highly romanticized pastel look calculated to win friends and influence people.' In an interview with Steven Zeitchik, Gosling and Refn discussed their collaboration and the long drives they would take together around the city. 'We would just drive for hours, talking and listening to music,' Gosling said. 'And I would say, 'This is what we want to capture in the movie, this feeling of being in a trance in a car with pop music playing.'' For his part, Refn added, 'I wanted to play with the classic notion of a fairy tale. Driver protects purity, and yet he can slay evil in the most vicious ways possible.' Zeitchik and Julie Makinen also created a guide to some of the film's Los Angeles locations, including MacArthur Park, the L.A. River and Point Magu. This week will see two programs of work by the Chicago-based artist Heather McAdams, who, though primarily known as a cartoonist, has also been creating idiosyncratic, handmade films for decades. On Thursday at the Academy Museum will be a program titled 'Kind of a Drag: Experimental Films, Documentaries and Scratch Animation by Heather McAdams, 1980-1995,' which will explore the range of McAdams' filmmaking practice. An ongoing preservation project undertaken by the Chicago Film Society has spurred a revival of interest in her work. 'I spent a lot of time trying to make stuff happen,' said McAdams during a call this week from her home in Chicago. 'I've always just been really doing a lot of different things, just doing stuff here at home and then all of a sudden the Chicago Film Society discovers this person that's living up on the north side of Chicago. Those guys are really great and they're very organized and they've got connections. I've gone to the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art. You sit around all your life and you go, 'Why doesn't somebody call me up?' And then the next thing when they call you up, you go, 'Why are they calling me up?'' Among the films to be shown will be 1980's 'The Scratchman' and 1982's 'Scratchman #2,' in which she scratched right onto the surface of found footage to create lively new images. 'You' from 1983 uses Brian Eno's song 'King's Lead Hat' as the background to a collage of footage. Among other titles showing are two documentary shorts, 1988's 'Meet … Bradley Harrison Picklesimer' and 1995's 'The Lester Film' (co-directed by her husband Chris Ligon), both unconventional portrait films. McAdams will be present for the event, joined by Picklesimer for a Q&A. 'The couple of things that seem to relate to just about everything I do is working with my limitations, the kind of homemade, work-with-what-you-got type thing,' added McAdams. 'I don't see that necessarily as a complete negative, and that runs through my work. And the other thing is humor, I'm always trying to make myself laugh or make other people laugh, even though everything I do isn't funny. Sometimes I just get weird and I go sideways and off the tracks or I make a comment about something that might be more spiritual or more important. Sometimes I make something that I go, 'Oh, God, I wish I didn't do that.'' On Wednesday at 2220 Arts + Archives, Mezzanine and Los Angeles Filmforum will host McAdams and Ligon for what is being billed as 'Chris & Heather's Big Screen Blowout,' a screening drawn from their extensive collection of 16mm ephemera. The program will include trailers for films such as 'Superchick' and 'Trip With the Teacher,' TV performances by Ricky Nelson and Buffalo Springfield and commercials and more. The evening will also include five one-minute animated cartoons McAdams and Ligon made for MTV in the 1990s. The couple will be there for the event as well. Of the 'Blowout,' McAdams said, 'It's fun to just see how the audience reacts as it's being projected. It's hard to explain to people exactly what it is, unless they're super hip and cool.' With a laugh she added, 'Like you guys are out in L.A.' 'Rosa la rose, fille publique' On Tuesday, Mezzanine will be putting on 2 shows of the local premiere of a new restoration of Paul Vecchiali's 1986 'Rosa la rose, fille publique' at Brain Dead Studios. The film is an intensely emotional melodrama about a Parisian prostitute, Rosa, just turning 20 years old and the most popular among the stable of women run by her pimp, as she grapples with what her future should be. Stylishly shot, the film is marked by a richness of character detail, with a deeply felt performance by Marianne Basler as Rosa, as the world around the Les Halles neighborhood feels particularly vibrant even with its undercurrents of intrigue and violence. Vecchiali, who died in 2023 and besides directing such films as 'The Strangler' and 'Encore' also produced Chantal Akerman's 'Jeanne Dielman,' is among a number of French filmmakers currently undergoing a renewed interest in their work. Luc Moullet will see a tribute series at Lincoln Center in August, while Jacques Rozier currently has a program of his work available on the Criterion Channel. For as much attention as French cinema has gotten over the years, it is exciting to see that there are still new corners to be explored and fresh discoveries to be made. 'Television Event' On Friday night the American Cinematheque at the Los Feliz 3 will host a screening of Jeff Daniels' documentary 'Television Event,' which takes a look at the end of the Cold War through the lens of the 1983 TV movie 'The Day After,' which dramatized the aftermath of a nuclear weapons attack around Kansas City, Mo., and Lawrence, Kan., with a cast that included Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg and John Lithgow. Nicholas Meyer, who directed 'The Day After,' will be present for a Q&A on Friday moderated by his daughter, screenwriter Dylan Meyer. 'Television Event' will also show on Saturday and Monday. Seen by more than 100 million people when it first aired, the film was shocking for its depiction of the realities of a nuclear attack. In a 2023 interview with Tim Grierson, Meyer said, 'I realized that I didn't want to make a 'good' movie. I didn't want to make a good movie, because I knew that if I made a good movie, nobody would talk about the subject — they would only talk about the movie. I didn't want a catchy theme song. I didn't want brilliant cinematography, I didn't want Emmy-nominated performances. All I wanted was to make a kind of public service announcement: If you have a nuclear war, this is what it might look like.' 'Les vampires' On Sunday the Academy Museum will have a rare showing of Louis Feuillade's 1915-16 complete 10-episode serial 'Les vampires.' Set in the Parisian underworld, it follows a ruthless gang of criminals and the woman (played by the electrifying star Musidora) who infiltrates their ranks. Modern audiences may also know 'Les vampires' as part of the basis for Olivier Assayas' 1996 film 'Irma Vep' and his own 8-episode series adaptation of the film in 2022. Free Indie Focus screening This Tuesday we will have an Indie Focus Screening Series event with a free showing of 'She Rides Shotgun' at the Culver Theater. Director Nick Rowland and stars Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger will be there for a Q&A. You can RSVP here. Adapted from the novel by Jordan Harper by screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, the crime thriller involves a man (Egerton), newly released from prison, attempting to protect his daughter (Heger) from the violent gang who is now after them both.
Times
23-06-2025
- Times
I joined vigilantes on the trail of my stolen £5,000 bike
It was Sunday afternoon when my phone alarm went off. My bike was being stolen from outside my Camden flat. I had chained it up for just 20 minutes while I went upstairs to have a shower and change. By the time I got back it was gone. The cargo bike was worth £5,000 when you include extras such as the child seat and we only bought it four months ago. It's everything to us and has made our life much easier: getting to school is five minutes now versus half an hour on public transport. Even though the bike had two top-of-the-range locks worth £400 and a £120 GPS device, the thief was able to get away. In hot pursuit of the thief As my phone warned the bike was on the move, I saw the thief cycling off in the distance and ran downstairs to go after him. I chased him on foot but couldn't see where he had gone, so I got on a rented Lime e-bike and followed him. I was tracking the GPS on my phone. The GPS tracker shows the bike was stolen at 1.18pm. I was almost catching up because the stolen bike had no battery. My wife rang the police, who initially said they would only come if it was a life-and-death situation. It was only after I cycled off in pursuit that they called back and came, because some neighbours had seen the thief cutting the lock and rang 999. My wife got in the police car and they followed on, but by then the thief was 20 minutes away. We missed the chance to intercept him, which is what this whole GPS kit is for. The GPS device's app shows the thief took until 1.46pm to cycle to Queen's Park, Kilburn, in northwest London. The investigation When we arrived at the scene there was nobody there. We knocked on doors and talked to neighbours. It's a nice neighbourhood — I assumed when I was chasing that I would end up in an estate, but this is an expensive area where terraced homes sell for £900,000. The police went to a few houses, checked through some gardens and spent 20 minutes trying to check the cameras, then they said: 'We need to wrap it up.' I was hoping that the police would be able to get more CCTV because they have it everywhere now. But they were under time pressure — they had to go. They gave us the report and a number to follow up, but that was about all they could do unless 'you see the ping go from the house to the street, then you can call 999 as it will be an active crime'. Bringing in the 'vigilantes' I thought 'Who takes someone's child's bike?' and posted my story on the London cycling sub-Reddit. A lot of people offered just to come down here, but I said it was probably not a good idea. Someone suggested I call BackPedal, a bike security company that retrieves stolen bicycles. They sent out one of their top agents, Bilal, to help me. He put a drone up to see if my bike was in one of the gardens, but we couldn't see it. Then he spoke to all the neighbours and even persuaded one to show us around the ground floor of his house to show the bike wasn't there. Normally the company would install its own specialist tracking devices, which give it a much higher chance of recovering the bike. As I now know, retrieving a bike with off-the-shelf kit is more difficult. For now it's a mystery where my bike ended up. Bilal Ali of BackPedal thinks the thief must have worked out how to remove the GPS device and chucked it over a wall. What I've learnt My mother was worried that my daughter and I would be targeted by muggers while we were actually on the bike. It's unfortunate that we have to even think about these situations with a nine-year-old on the back. I'm checking all the secondary marketplaces such as Gumtree and Facebook constantly to see if anything pops up, but it's probably on its way to Romania by now.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Friendship Breakups Suck. Little Simz Turned Hers Into Gold on ‘Lotus'
Since she was a kid, Simbiatu Ajikawo has had a low tolerance for disloyalty. There are quick quips lambasting snakes throughout her acclaimed discography, and even at eleven years old, she spit, 'I'm Little Simz and I set trends/Don't like liars/I hate fake friends,' when her older sister took her to rap at BBC's Radio 1 Xtra. Her real breakthrough as Little Simz came much later, with 2018's Grey Area, which was nominated for the U.K.'s prestigious Mercury Prize, then 2021's Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, which won it. She followed that with No Thank You, which rebuked the music industry she was by all-appearances thriving in as something much darker and more draining than it looked. Inflo – the musician who's been tapped by Adele and Tyler, The Creator, and who's shaped the mysterious collective SAULT with Simz and his wife, Cleo Sol – produced all three of Simz's last albums. Simz has openly coveted her creative partnership with Inflo, a bond they began building when she was 9 years old. Then, in March, The Guardian reported that she was suing him, born Dean Josiah Cover, for allegedly failing to repay a $2.2 million loan – that went, in part, towards SAULT's only live performance in 2023 – which she says eventually left her unable to pay her taxes and subject to penalties. More from Rolling Stone Little Simz Previews Upcoming Album 'Lotus' With Cinematic 'Flood' Video Coldplay Tap Little Simz, Burna Boy for Hopeful Single 'We Pray' Watch Michael J. Fox Join Coldplay on Guitar at Glastonbury 'Why do you steal? Why do you spill blood and then go hide?' Simz raps on 'Thief,' the jarring opener to Lotus, her sixth album and first without Inflo in seven years. 'Why do you take the rule book from people that hurt you and use it as a guide?/I'm lucky that I got out now, it's a shame though, I really feel sorry for your wife.' The song thrashes like 1990s grunge and Simz is absolutely cutthroat on it, evoking the eerie menace of Kendrick Lamar's whopping Drake diss 'Euphoria.' The public nature of her fallout with Inflo and how readily she tackles it on Lotus makes it a distinctly personal entry to her oeuvre – listening feels more like living in her skin than any project she's done before. There's a meta-allusion to the way she refuses to bury her truth under convoluted poetic flourishes when she tells Wretch 32 not to do the same on 'Blood,' where she and her fellow British rapper trade bars as they portray siblings in a fight. Lotus is an excellent album, in part because songs like 'Thief' and 'Blood' are so uncomfortable, like peering at a nasty accident on the side of the highway and feeling more alive because of it. In the aftermath of an imploded childhood friendship, Lotus is a rigorous ode to the trauma and wisdom of truly growing up. Lotus is also an excellent album because of its deeply textured and expansive production, a satisfying victory given the circumstances. On 'Lonely,' she frets, 'Lonely making an album is tackling all doubt/I'm used to making it with [there's censor beep instead of a name], can I do it without?' Yet, under new producer Miles Clinton James, all the album's instrumentals are crisp, careful, and raw, whether they're the rugged rock of the 'Thief,' 'Flood,' 'Young,' 'Enough,' and 'Lotus,' the jazzy R&B of 'Lonely' and 'Free,' the stripped down acoustics of 'Peace,' the softly orchestral lament of 'Hallow,' the vintage Afrobeat of 'Lion,' or buoyant bossa nova of 'Only.' Where Lotus is fun, it's unforced, and where it is grave, it's understated. The album does retain some of the airy, gentle essence of Simz's prior work with Inflo, Cleo Sol, and Sault, a band in which the latter two women were the defining voices amongst mostly shrouded collaborators. The similarities, though, feel like Simz staking her claim to a sound she was integral in pushing forward. Little Simz's hard-earned sense of self-worth courses through the album. Much of her best rapping here blossomed from hardship – that, in fact, is what a lotus is, a flower that can bloom out of mud. 'I know my mind is a textbook they can learn from even though I ain't got a diploma,' she says on 'Blue,' in the middle of a calm but relentless flow full of empathetic reflections on poverty, incarceration, family, and death. 'Free' is a particularly moving trove of wisdom, expertly crafted with subtle foreshadowing between a cunning first verse on what love really is and a second on how fear threatens it. 'I think that shit is a lethal weapon,' she says. Though Lotus finds Simz rapping as victim and survivor, it's filled with empathy for just how hard the human experience is, even for her tormentor, whose own pain she acknowledges. 'I don't expect you're not flawed person/But thought you was good at the core person,' she says on 'Hallow,' before reiterating an idea from 'Thief,' that the real resolution she needs is internal: 'I'm tryna forgive myself,' she says there. 'I don't need to forgive you so I can heal.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
