Finally I’m getting paid off this shit
Spent years, spent months, spent days on this shit
Look at me, once again I was made for this shit
“Good For What”
“My music is the only thing I have that is actually mine,” states Little Simz calmly and seriously. She has a special way of uttering sentences like this, which might sound pompous coming from anyone else. Sentences that you believe (or want to believe) but that nonetheless seem a bit larger than life given the setting, a small beige sofa, on which we sought refuge from the London weather. Little Simz speaks with remarkable clarity. With a calmness that initially seems hard to reconcile with her fast-paced, energetic songs. “I’m very precious with my music. I don’t feel comfortable to give it away just like that. Not to fit something silly. Even if the money is good. Especially when I know how much has gone into it.”
Little Simz, born Simbiatu “Simbi” Ajikawom and raised in North London, is one of the most talented female rappers of her generation. Her albums are mixtapes that have been thought through as if they were concept albums (or concept albums that feel like mixtapes). The basis of her lyrics can be found in her personal thoughts and insights: about growing up as a young black woman, her parents’ dreams, her fears, insecurities and toxic relationships. For British hip hop, Little Simz may well be what the artist Noname is for American hip hop: a young female artist who was praised early on by critics and other musicians alike; in sports one might say: a wunderkind. Little Simz is a smart, conscious rapper, who comes across in her lyrics sometimes as cool, sometimes as tough – just to then reveal her own inner conflict with impactful honesty. It’s reminiscent of Lauryn Hill. Or what Kendrick Lamar does now. It was the latter who launched her name into a much wider orbit four years ago, with a line that is as astonishing as it is much-quoted: “She is the illest doing it right now.” Now you could interpret this “ill” in many different ways: crass, mad, or incredibly good.
She releases her music without a record deal. That, in and of itself, isn’t particularly unusual these days. In the age of the internet, a lot of artists start their careers without record companies. However, the quantity of Little Simz output is amazing: all of the 14(!) albums that she has already made by the age of 25 – the first aged just 16 – were released as an unsigned artist. These were mostly mixtapes and EPs, released via BandCamp or on her own small label called 101 Age, which she founded in 2014. Her three official albums so far have all been released by 101 Age, with the last, Grey Area, coming out last spring.
Many events started and happened incredibly quickly. In 2015, when her first LP A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons came out, Kendrick Lamar expressed his admiration for her, and Forbes Magazine included her as the first British independent-rap act in its renowned “30 Under 30” list – she was just 21 years old. Since then many labels have come knocking, including a lot of majors, but she hasn’t signed with any of them, wanting to remain her own boss. Her money flows in many directions, but always through her own hands.
It takes a whole lot of energy to organise this kind of self-managed career, which keeps propelling her from appointment to appointment and from one decision straight to the next. It’s been a long while, she tells me, since she last spent such an extended stint in her hometown London as she is doing at the moment. Over the last few years she spent almost 300 days per year on the road. In 2017 especially, the year her second album, Stillness in Wonderland, was released, she spent so much time traveling all over the world, for promotions, concerts and on tour as the support act for Damon Albarn’s project Gorillaz, that she now says: “I was burning myself down.”
333,985 miles is what the concert website Songkick calculates as the distance between her live gigs since 2015 – easily one and a half times the distance to the moon. However, now that she is home there is just as much work to be done. Studio sessions, shootings, rehearsals, business meetings, and – as if that’s not enough – she also acts. “I haven’t properly relaxed in a while,” she admits. “Even my workout in the gym is quite intense. I do it because I feel like I need the release. But it’s definitely not relaxing.” She quickly rolls herself a cigarette and stuffs the tobacco bag back into the pocket of her hoodie. Simbi likes her style to be comfortable: no jewellery, no nail extensions, but trainers and preferably tracksuit bottoms, which is what she’s wearing today, even though she knows that there is going to be a photo shoot involved.
It’s only when you look really closely that you can spot the energy and tension buzzing inside her. You can see it in the slightly exhausted but highly focused expression in her eyes as they are looking out at the world. These are the eyes of someone whose thoughts never stop racing. Because she already knows exactly what she wants to achieve next, and what should follow. For now, she just needs to figure out how best to get there.
Everything’s imperative for the way I live
I know it’s material, but not irrelevant
All this here is worked for, not inherited
“Selfish”
We are in Hackney in North East London. The venue she has chosen for our meeting is one of many that have sprung up here since young creatives and entrepreneurs, and the money they brought, started arriving in this formerly working class area. It’s a mixture of restaurant, café space and bar, furnished with an idiosyncratic mix of furniture and housed in what used to be an industrial laundry. The atmosphere not just in this spot but in the whole area is one of constant, bustling activity. All the passers-by look like they have a reason for hurrying along: an exciting job, a date, a smart flat. The original plan was that we were going to go for a walk. Simbi knows the area well, not just as it is now but also as it was in the days before even the most hidden-away corners became hip and expensive. She has a little studio nearby that she also uses to rehearse for live appearances. Right now, however, the clouds darkly hanging low above us are threatening a downpour, but then all they manage is cold, persistent drizzle that covers the city. Simbi quickly stamps out her cigarette. So, no walk after all. Much better to get inside and onto one of the vintage sofas. She orders peppermint tea and asks me what I would like. When, later, I want to pay, I find that the bill has already been settled.
I ask her how much she, as a label boss, thinks about money.
“I don’t really focus on money,” she answers. “Music was never a thing I was doing for the money. It was my passion. I loved it from an early age. I just always believed that money will come. One day, regardless of anything.”
What was it like when she started writing her first raps as a pre-teen girl, I wonder. Did the rags-to-riches stories of the rappers she adored have an impact on her?
“When I started, I didn’t even think about money. Because I never had any as a kid,” she tells me, her face earnest, her voice quiet. The tea spoon is clinking against the side of her cup. “Growing up I really learned how to save money. I had pocket money when I was young. When I got to a certain age I didn’t really want to ask my mom for money anymore. So, I used to save one pound every day in a jar. By the time I was 15 or 16 I spent all my money on my equipment. A lot of studio pieces. That was my investment. Because I knew I wouldn’t have enough money to keep paying for studio sessions. I just bought me my own studio. And I was okay with sacrificing going out with my friends on the weekends, because I knew that every little bit of money will help get me to next level. That’s where I got my understanding of money – because I was funding everything myself.”
Who is her best financial adviser, I ask.
“I think, my accountant. She’s an awesome older lady. I met her when I wasn’t even making enough money to bring an accountant on board. But she helped me anyway. She was like: ask me anything! She told me all the things I needed to know. Basic stuff really, but totally new to me. Like saving all your receipts. I remember I’d never seen someone working a calculator like this. She had it in front of her and she was talking to me and typing on it without even looking. And I remember that I thought: she’s doing these numbers like she’s playing an instrument. It was beautiful.”
It was only when the payments for her gigs started getting a bit bigger and turning into a “form of income”, and rapping suddenly became “a real job” that she really understood how complicated it actually was to be your own business. “Suddenly I had to pay people. Hire people to mix my songs. Pay expenses for travelling.”
Is she still managing her entire budget completely by herself?
“Now I’m in a position where I have people to do that. My label doesn’t have any permanent employees. But I hired a manager and an accountant, and I have a label services company, helping me with marketing, promotion and distribution. But, yeah, at the beginning it was 100 percent me. I was running everything with my local bank account. I was filing every single invoice. I was doing the taxes and all this logical stuff I wish I had been told in school. And I was like: what the fuck, why don’t they tell you shit like that?”
When listening to Simbi, you get the impression of someone with a strong work ethic – a workaholic even. A young woman who always wants to do everything by herself and always tries to do too much at a time. Someone who preferred to get things started rather than waiting for them to come along. She exudes the kind of drive that comes across as both admirable and a little intimidating at the same time. Already at the age of 14 she kept phoning the US record labels to try to talk them into listening to her demos. “I called Def Jam, I called all of them. I’ve always been the proactive type.”
I ask Simbi what she prefers, earning money or spending money?
She considers this briefly before answering: “Well, it depends on what you mean by spending money. The question is what for? I don’t really like to spend money on bullshit or unnecessary stuff. It’s just not the kind of person I am. I don’t have to go to the club and prove something. I still have that same mindset when I was 15: I was the only one who didn’t eat when I was in restaurants with my friends. Because I decided I wanted to save the money for something else. I don’t live that rapping lifestyle. I have my own shit to take care of: paying bills and taking care of my family. Of course, I could afford to buy jewellery and do all these things. But it’s not gonna help me flip my money. I’m more in a game where I’m trying to make my money make more money. I’m just learning to recognize assets. And stay away from the liabilities.”
She pauses for a moment and looks across to the DJ desk, where a colourful mixture of men, women and drag queens in extravagant costumes are conducting the soundcheck for a party that is due to be held here later: DRINKS + DRAG. Then she adds: “At the same time I’m 25 and still want to have a good time. So, I’m trying to find a cool balance between everything.” If she does spend money on things other than her music, she spends it on experiences, she says – on travelling and on going to a good restaurant every now and again.
Book smart with the bars
But I never learnt that from school
“101 FM”
Her family, whom she is now also supporting financially, consists of her mother and three siblings. Simbi is the youngest child of a family with Nigerian roots. She grew up in Islington, in north London, and her mother still lives there. Islington is an area that is full of stark contrasts: lots of social housing, high levels of child poverty – and all of this right beside the rich kids in fancy private flats. It’s a place where the social gap is immense. “Even if it was tough for us, my mom has done a great job at keeping everyone positive and on the straight and narrow. She always said: I don’t want you to worry. Just be happy, do what you long for and we’ll be fine. Her mentality allowed me to work on my dreams. And she also told me not to give to receive. If you want to give, give and be done with it! Don’t expect anything back. That’s exactly what I’m doing now with my family.”
Hip hop has been her constant companion ever since she was a child. “I was nine years old when I first started rapping. I was always a performing arts kid. Whether it was dancing, acting, singing – I naturally gravitated towards all of it,” she recalls. Her current album features a song she wrote during that time in Islington, back when she was taking her first steps as a musician: “101 FM” is, by Little Simz’ standards, quite a nostalgic piece. Above a playful 8-bit beat she raps about the time of her first joints, early studio sessions and Grime MCs like Dizzee Rascal. The hook reminisces about the early Noughties: “We used to have dreams of getting out the flats / Playing PS2, Crash Bandicoot, Mortal Kombat / I mastered my flow like Dizzee and Busta.” It is also about pirate radio stations, which in Great Britain played an important role in spreading grime and dubstep. “I was growing up to these pirate radio stations. It was like a lifestyle,” she says. “The stations told you what music you should listen to, what clothes to wear and how to build a proper beat.”
On her Instagram account there is a photo of her from that time. It shows Simbi, maybe nine years old, sitting on her bed wearing pyjama bottoms and a pink t-shirt. Lost in thought she is bent over a writing pad and jotting down lyrics. That’s how it all started. Just like so many inner city kids at the time, she went straight from school to St Mary’s Youth Club (which in the UK is also known for two of its other alumnae: the casting show stars Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke). “You could do so many different activities. Like dancing, cooking, sports, music, drama class … whatever. It was just a space in my area where kids could come to and find out what they’re interested in. And to do something positive in an area with a lot of negativity.” She considers herself a “product of arts funding”, which is why she is angry that so many London youth clubs have been closed in the last few years, including St. Mary’s: “That place helped me nurture my talent. And there are still so many kids who are just as talented and just as hungry. So where do we find these kids? Why would you want to take that away? I don’t get it. It gets me so mad to see the kids in my area today. It’s hard for them to find their way if they don’t have that space.”
The kind of life that then becomes a possible option is the topic of a newly rebooted series, in which Little Simz has an acting role. The first two series of Top Boy were broadcast on Channel 4 in 2011 and quickly achieved cult status before the show was cancelled almost as quickly. “I was a big fan. I think it was a real crucial part of London street culture.” But then Canadian rap superstar Drake discovered the British crime drama series about an estate dominated by gang culture and drug dealing and he managed to convince the streaming giant Netflix to recommission the series. The new episodes are due to be released in the autumn. Among an almost entirely male cast, Simbi, who had acted in two TV series as a teenager (one of which, Youngers, fittingly followed a group of friends who try to find success as musicians), plays the role of Shelley, a young woman who unwittingly gets caught in the line of fire between the gangs. “It was easy to tab in. I know so many girls with stories like Shelley’s. But there’s a lot of other stuff that comes through in the show: gentrification, all this glamorizing of poor neighbourhoods and how the areas change when the money comes in. It mirrors exactly what’s happening here in the last years.” Simbi says “here” because the TV series, while set on a fictional estate, is located in the area around London Fields, which is exactly where we are sitting on a slightly sagging sofa with our somewhat overpriced tea on this rainy afternoon.
You sold out for a quick buzz and honey, you got no love
No less than what I know that I’m worth and I won’t budge
“Offence”
Maybe, I think, Hackney is just like the major labels’ record deals and the young artists that they swallow up. They make these acts a good offer, further their careers, want to exert influence on their artistic development. The stories are about money, and often they are very much the same, I say to her. Simbi nods, a tiny, almost unnoticeable gesture, a maybe. “All the artists that I saw picked up by a label, essentially, they kind of sold a piece of themselves to get to that place they wanted to reach.” She says this without any hint of disparagement, in the same tone that is familiar from her songs: unflinching, yet in a thoughtful kind of way.
How difficult is it really without a label, I ask her.
“I was never against it. For the longest time I wanted to be signed,” is her answer. “I didn’t know any other way. That was all I was taught that would work for me. All the other artists I’ve seen that came before me had record labels. So obviously in my head it was an intuitive thing. I thought that’s how you do it: you get a record label to help you make it work. But when I started meeting with these people, I don’t know, it just didn’t feel right. I was being offered these deals I would have had to compromise a lot for. And I was disappointed because this was not what I thought it would be. I’m not saying I’m never going to be signed. I’m not trying to go against the grain or to be this rebel, to be unorthodox. But even though I knew it may be the easier option, I thought maybe I should just do a bit more ground work by myself first. To get myself to a point where I will get what I feel I deserve.”
What was it that wasn’t good about the deals she rejected, I ask.
“Like I said, money is not everything to me. It’s more about terms.” She declines going into more detail. “I’m happy to be in a position where everything’s on my terms. With my recent album I was really blessed to work with a great team. They allowed me to let go of the control a little bit, but at the same time everyone was like following my lead. Everyone was hearing me out. Like when I had this idea to shoot the artwork myself. Literally no one had seen what I’ve been doing in photography. But everyone was still like: okay, cool, do it! I was encouraged to try new things. Push myself. And I’ve been learning so much through having that DIY mentality.”
Simbi looks at me with big, wide-awake eyes, in the same decisive way that she does everything: rapping, performing on stage, posing for pictures (with an umbrella if necessary), even smoking and ordering a second cup of tea, “with honey please!” Nonetheless, in real life she is not the same as the loud rap persona of her songs who can slip effortlessly into the bragging tone of her hip hop colleagues. On her songs she might rap lines like “Just got here and I’m running this shit / I could buy your life if I wanted to, bitch.” Yet here, in the orange light of the table lamp that is illuminating her face warmly from the side, stirring her new cup of tea gently, she seems almost modest. Like someone who doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone other than themselves.
Nonetheless, there must have been times when she did some soul-searching?
“I didn’t have no doubt. Not one bit,” she answers immediately, followed by a long pause. “I was always like: I’m just gonna figure it out as I go along. I don’t even want my label to be a traditional label. I feel like for a long time I’m probably going to be the only artist on it. But yes, it’s not always super easy. Especially in the last two years I was taking on a lot. I knew it wasn’t good for my mental state. From time to time I have to remember this: as much as I’m into the business side and all this stuff – I’m still an artist. I have to focus on this.”
It is this ambition, she says, that motivates her to take a new direction with each of her albums. The current record, for example, sounds more diverse and soulful, not just in musical terms but also lyrically. After the previous two records with their fictional perspectives, the lyrics on the new album for the first time allow the listener insights into Simbi’s insecurities and depressed periods while on tour. This is not something that comes easily to her – she describes herself as introverted – but she does it nonetheless.
“Of course, it would be a lot easier if I did have tour support. And if I wasn’t the one that is funding everything. There are days when I think: why? Why did I choose to do this on my own?”
After all, although she has attached herself to a large label’s services in areas such as sales and marketing, a significant part of the decision-making remains hers. What strategic direction should she take as a young female rapper in 2019? How to achieve it, without having a million-pound budget to back her up? Simbi has been weaving her way through this business long enough not to believe anymore that it is still about selling music. She does not come across as someone who still considers chart positions to be a relevant measure. Of course she wants to be heard. That is why she constantly releases new tracks. Yet, that is not what she is selling. In this world that is short on attention and big on branding, she herself with her energy and creativity is the product – even though she would never put it this way herself. She wants to be able to continue making music. Therefore the money that she needs to pay for the whole operation and for her living costs has to come from somewhere else: from live appearances, for example, or from cooperations with other artists. Nobody is thinking these thoughts for her. It is she herself who makes these decisions.
“It could have been so, so, so much simpler. But the way I do it is just a lot more rewarding. Not in terms of any sort of tangible reward. But just knowing that you’ve done that,” she says, drawing out the “you” in a brittle voice. “You! It’s also inspiring. I mean, I meet so many people, many young black women, telling me that they’ve started doing this or that now because they see me do it. It has become something that is not really about me anymore. It has become bigger than me.”
They will never wanna admit I’m the best here
For the mere fact that I’ve got ovaries
It’s a woman world, so to speak
“Venom”
How many young, black women does she know in London who have set up their own record label like she did, I ask her. She thinks this through before answering: “Not necessarily with labels. But I know a lot of women who started their own business.”
There is a term that Little Simz has rejected right from the start: “female rapper.” Few things annoy her as much as being pigeon-holed like that. Being a woman is an important topic in her music, but she does not want to be pinned down to just this. She started her first LP in 2015 with the line: “Everybody knows that I’m king now. Women can be kings.” It was a boast, of course, as they have always been traditional in rap music. At the same time, however, it also carried another kind of message: She would never allow her gender to dictate what she wanted, or didn’t want, to achieve in her genre. She picks up this theme on her current album and puts herself on a level with male artists often accorded the term “genius”: “I’m Picasso with the pen” and “I’m Jay-Z on a bad day, Shakespeare on my worst days.”
So much for her view of herself. Bold announcements like these, however, can’t outsmart reality. For a long time, she was overlooked for almost all important British music prizes. Only in July 2019, for example, astonishingly late, was she nominated for the Mercury Prize. You could of course consider this pure chance, but other, male artists, like the post-punk band Black Midi and the punk-grime rapper Slowthai, need only one album to advance onto the shortlist for the prize. With Little Simz it took three. There seem to be forces that slow her down and require twice as much endurance from her as from them: money, power structures, gender roles.
Does that make her angry? “Of course, it’s frustrating. Not only because of me. But to see that happening to a lot of women in the industry. But I also feel like there are a lot more women coming through. There’s definitely some sort of shift. I’m not saying that we’re there yet. But I do recognise the change and it feels like a step in the right direction. These systems have been implemented for ages. It’s going to take time to change them. Maybe it won’t even be fixed in my lifetime. But I’m patient. And I’m happy that I’m living in the change.”
Evening has arrived, and around us it’s getting louder and louder. Outside, a small throng of guests has gathered. Thin grey cigarette smoke rises over colourful clothes and shrill chatter.
What would actually constitute a good deal, I try to find out right at the end. What record contract would she sign? She laughs. “I can’t tell you that. Not on record.” And you just know that the next time she is sitting at a table in the office of one of the labels, she will know exactly what she is doing. And what she wants to do next.
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