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A raw reckoning from rap’s quiet warrior. The rapper strips back the polish for her most vulnerable, soul-searching project yet – one that hits hard.

Although lotuses symbolise rebirth, Little Simz isn’t being “born again” on her sixth album. Instead, she’s peeling back layers, exposing the bruised psyche of an artist in recovery from emotional betrayal and now finding a way back to herself. After a flawless trilogy with Grey Area (2019), Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (2021) and No Thank You (2022), Simz has become synonymous with refined, thoughtful hip-hop. But Lotus dials down the grandeur in favour of raw, sometimes uncomfortable introspection. It’s a heavy listen – not for lack of quality, but for how deeply personal it gets.

This is also her first release without longtime producer InFlo – who she’s currently suing for over £1million in unpaid debts. There’s clearly more to that story than we’ll ever know, but ‘Lotus’ feels like the fallout: the sound of Simz clawing herself out of creative limbo and finding her voice again.

Her voice growls on ‘Thief’, as twangy bass underscores a brutal takedown of a pivotal figure in her career. “That’s what abusers do / Make you think you’re crazy and second-guess your every move,” she spits with a new venom-soaked bite that’s more ferocious than we’ve ever heard from her before. There’s no room for euphemism here – each bar lands like a final nail in the coffin as the deceptively sweet hook rings through. This ominousness oozes into ‘Flood’, but soon, this defiant anger softens, injecting ‘Young’ and ‘Free’ with levity and pulling her back before rage fully takes over.

If Lotus isn’t about revival, it’s definitely about redemption. After burning the bridge with her manipulator, Simz bolsters her hard-won confidence with ‘Lion’ and ‘Enough’. These funky, percolated cuts revel in funk and highlife, swiftly turning into affirmations. On ‘Lion’, Simz calls herself a young Lauryn Hill while Obongjayar warns others of the duo’s greatness.

‘Enough’ is one for the resilient, self-assured Black girls as she raps, “You didn’t know I is that girl / I am an electric black girl,” while daring anyone to test her credibility. But Simz’s boastfulness peaks on the titular track where, alongside Yusef Dayes and Michael Kiwanuka, she vows to never dim her light again. “You brought that woman to a low / I might amplify her,” she raps with newfound clarity. “Like dew from a flower, I see the break of dawn.”

But the heart of ‘Lotus’ lies in its quiet moments. ‘Only’ is a lush, jazzy song that shows the evolution of Simz’s signature style. Soul-soothing notes blanket her observant and eloquent tales across the album, this one focusing on an indulgent and overwhelming love, as the pillowy vocals of Jungle’s Lydia Kitto ground the song in warmth and serenity. Then there’s ‘Lonely’, the album’s true emotional epicentre. It’s heavy, harrowing, and heartbreakingly honest as Simz has nowhere to hide on the revealing song, realising how powerful her own autonomy is: “I was lonely making an album / Till I realised I’m all I needed to get through.”

Lotus isn’t always an easy listen, and sometimes the truths in its bars feel more like diary entries than rap lyrics, but maybe that’s its purpose. Across 13 tracks, Simz sifts through grief, pressure, burnout and spiritual reckoning with a vulnerability that is admirable, making it among her most important works emotionally rather than sonically. Here, Simz is stripped to the root, healing in real time. Raw, flawed and deeply human – this is what blooming really sounds like. — (via NME)
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Little Simz’s Lotus is the music-industry equivalent of a slash-and-burn harvest, where once-fertile land is razed and set ablaze, flooding the soil with nutrients. Simz started and scrapped four different full-length projects between Lotus and the release of NO THANK YOU in 2022. With new producer Miles Clinton James at the helm of Lotus, she puts her interpersonal issues on display with a sometimes deft touch; it’s a thorough excavation of the graveyard of one’s ego and closest relationships.

On past albums, Simz’s topical scope has been vast, with varying degrees of success: she hip-fired at the music industry’s exploitation of Black artistry on NO THANK YOU and probed her psyche on 2021’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. Within those expansive arcs, the strongest moments were when Simz took aim at specific targets, whether external or internal. It’s that energy that makes the opener "Thief" an invigorating entry point. Her plainspoken, tempered tone pops with personality, making her strongest musings land with the impact of an exploding bullet.

James, who previously produced for the London-based band Kokoroko, handles all 13 tracks on Lotus. Largely forgoing the cinematic flair of Simz’s previous records, James surrounds her voice with unfussy arrangements that draw from jazz, afrobeat, and rock. It’s a difficult balance but they manage, more or less. What’s clear on Lotus is that Simz hasn’t closed herself off to the world. Cameos from Sampha, rapper Wretch 32, and Michael Kiwanuka (who has also worked closely with SAULT) raise the album’s ceiling, marking the welcome return of a collaborative ethos after NO THANK YOU. — (via Pitchfork)

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Label: AWAL Recordings Ltd 
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold
Released: 2025
Genre: Hip Hop, Funk / Soul
Style: Rap, Female Vocals

File under: Hip Hop
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