Feature: A Breakdown of Little Simz' 'Grey Area'

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY LNWY, MARCH 2019

“Allow me to pick up where I left off,” Little Simz spits on ‘Offence’, the opening track of third album GREY Area. “The biggest phenomenon and I’m Picasso with the pen.”

As the title suggests, the London rapper is still bridging that gap between her grime and underground hip-hop beginnings and a burgeoning artistic profile that has garnered praise from Kendrick Lamar, tours with the likes of Ms. Lauryn Hill, and collaborations with Gorillaz.

“I left it all in the music,” the 25-year-old tells me, reflecting on another emotional creative process, following 2016’s Stillness in Wonderland, which put her on the map. “The anticipation has been crazy, which has been nerve-wracking as well, but I’m excited.”

Dealing with anger, love lost, grief and the call to greatness, Little Simz takes us through these 10 songs of intense emotion and lyrical prowess.

‘Offence’

This track not only sets a great tone for the album, but it’s a wicked call to arms. When in the process of making this album did this song come to life for you?
This was one of the first songs we made, actually. I remember [childhood friend/producer] Inflo working on the production. I didn’t even like it, to be honest. It was so different. I think it just caught me off guard. It got me out of my comfort zone. I didn’t like the beat, he didn’t like my writing, but we decided to build on it because I liked my writing and he liked the beat! There had to be an element of trust and we collectively kept building on the song.

‘Boss’

The bassline on this tune is such a good example of how groovy this record is, the rhythmic control throughout is great. Can you see ‘Boss’ as being a bit of a companion piece to ‘Offence’?
‘Boss’ is just me going off, really. It’s super raw, cutting edge. It’s just very raw. I remember when I recorded it, I recorded it on a shitty little hand-held [mic]. I recorded the rest of the album on this really nice, crispy [one]. I thought, “I need to re-record ‘Boss’ on this other really nice mic”, to make everything feel consistent. I thought I could add the distortion and the effects later. So I actually did. I recorded it and it just lost some of the magic. We decided to keep it [the original version] and it turned out perfectly.

‘Selfish’ (ft. Cleo Sol)

How did you get linked up with Cleo Sol for the first time?
I met Cleo through Flo [aka Inflo]. Cleo’s been around for years, I used to listen to her when I was in school. I think what she brought to ‘Selfish’, I don’t feel like anyone else could have brought. When I was writing this song, it was super stripped back and raw. Nothing had been added, no strings, no bass. It was literally just the piano and drums. We kept building on it and it became more and more special. I think we all knew it was going to be something really special from the beginning stages; I’m really pleased with how that one turned out.

‘Wounds’ (ft. Chronixx)

When it comes to ‘Wounds’, the way you channel pain and raw emotion is done so well. The orchestration tied in with your lyricism adds another level of emotion to it. Take me through the significance of this one to you?
‘Wounds’ was a song I wrote when my friend had just died. He was murdered. I remember getting the news in the morning. I woke up to a missed call telling me. Later on in the day, I went to the studio and just sat in the studio by myself in the dark and just cried. Nobody knew I was at the studio, no one in the building even knew I was in the studio. I just snuck in. I just looped a beat and started writing. That’s what started. Before that event had happened, we had the beat for it already. Flo had made it and I just didn’t know how I wanted to approach it. It had to sit for a bit and I knew when I came back to it, it would make sense, but I wasn’t going to force it. It’s a shame that it took that to happen for me to write that song.

‘Venom’

‘Venom’ was me releasing all this built up anger that I had over the years, brooding. I released it all on ‘Venom’.

‘101 FM’

This one reminded me of Jay Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’’ era. This track sounds like it was a lot of fun to make.

When I had made it, I instantly knew, “This was the one.” This was what I grew up on, you know? As much as it does have that ‘Big Pimpin’’ hip-hop aesthetic, it is a grime track. It’s what I grew up on, so that song – as soon as I had the beat, I connected with it so quick. I felt 15 again. It’s nuts. I felt like I was in my pocket, I knew how to sit in it. It felt very familiar. Even after we made that, we made another three grime songs. After we had our little grime phase we steered back on course for the album.

‘Pressure’ (ft. Little Dragon)

Another collaboration that works well even though it might be left field for some, with Little Dragon in the fold. How did that come about?

We had the song and we thought [Little Dragon singer] Yukimi [Nagano] would sound great on it. My manager at the time hit her team up and it just progressed from there. We connected and started talking. We chopped it up. She’s super lovely, super nice. It turned out she was a fan too, which I didn’t know. I thought it was going to be a bit of a long shot, but she was into it for sure.

‘Therapy’

Unabashed confidence and honesty is a huge drawcard here. What mindset are you in when you’re writing this sort of song?

I think it’s a universal topic, therapy and mental health. I think it’s one that a lot of people can relate to. More so at the time when I was writing the record, I’d been told that therapy would be good for me. I didn’t really want to hear it, I didn’t really understand the concept. Going and sitting there in an appointment, I didn’t get it. I didn’t feel like it was something I wanted to invest my money into at the time. I just took to what I do, which is do it myself and put it on record. I guess I wrote it imagining myself in a therapy session, lying on the sofa [with a] coffee table and someone in front of you. It’s like I’m talking to a therapist.

‘Sherbet Sunset’

What took you down this song’s direction?
Love, innit? Another universal concept; something I’m sure a lot of people can relate to. I didn’t want it to come across as a diss track, I’m not out here dissing anyone. It’s just my vibe. To be honest, everything I needed to say about that song, I’ve said it. Even just thinking about it now, I’ve said everything I’ve wanted to say on it. Especially on that one.

‘Flowers’ (ft. Michael Kiwanuka)

As the album closer, ‘Flowers’ is very defined, very weighted. What does this song mean to you?

It’s super important. I’m really proud of this song. Paying homage to the greats, of course, people who have paved the way. Great, great musicians who have graced this earth. [‘Flowers’ namechecks artists who died at 27, including Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson, and Amy Winehouse.]

For me, just looking at my life, where I’m at now and where they were at when … that age is right around the corner. I’m not saying anything’s going to happen to me, touch wood, but it’s crazy how quick time flies.

When I think about how much I want to achieve and how ambitious I am, I’m thinking about how ambitious they must have been,  too. They were so young and there was so much more they could have done and offered the earth. I remember when 25 looked so far away. Now I’m here and I don’t know how I got here, I just did. I landed here. It’s another reflective song, paying homage.

GREY Area, an album by Little Simz on Spotify

Feature: Smino's Guide to St. Louis

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY LNWY, JANUARY 2019

SMINO is making damn sure people remember where he comes from.

“I make sure I do certain events, I do my Christmas event and I make sure I put my billboards in St Louis as well. I want to make it known that I’m from there. I want to inspire people.”

For many hip-hop fans who grew up with the genre as the 2000s beckoned, the St Louis area of the American midwest was pioneered by rappers like Sylk Smoov and further dictated by artists including Nelly and St. Lunatics, Chingy, Murphy Lee, and J-Kwon.

The introduction of St Louis Bounce – a melodic sing-song style of rapping over bluesy chords and beat production – in the early-2000s became the sound of the city.

To look at the city now, the diversity of the St Louis sound is notable. Smino himself is a prime example of how the current generation of Missouri-born rappers are changing up the game.

Fusing slick hip-hop with neo-soul and R&B influences, the 27-year-old put out two critically acclaimed albums in just two years: 2017’s blkswn and 2018’s NØIR.

NØIR ups the ante on his own game, deftly switching between frustrated/punchy rap energy and an almost honeyed singing voice that he became renowned for on blkswn.

BORN into a family of musicians – a keyboardist father, a vocalist mother, and a bassist grandfather who played with Muddy Waters – the young Christopher Smith Jr learned drums as part of his church’s band before he found his calling with rapping.

As Smino, he found his groove in Chicago, where early EP releases found him falling into the same league as other breakthrough young acts including Mick Jenkins, SABA, Noname, and Ravyn Lenae.

These artists shared the same hunger to make music that not only broke them out of the underground, but also brought wider attention towards young acts creating art in some of America’s roughest cities.

“I had a whole bunch of people being like, ‘Yeah man, you inspire me to actually go forward and do whatever I want to do’,” he says about connecting with young artists in St Louis. “A lot of people feel like reaching into St Louis and trying to help.”

“St Louis is a city where, we don’t have a lot, but the people make the city what it is.”

Bari

My homie Bari is the shit. The world don’t even know the half of it.

We’ve been making music together since we were 14, since we were in high school. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable; I don’t have to worry about anything. I can just sit in studio and he’ll play a beat, and not even talk about what we’re going to write about. I’ll record and he’ll record, and it all just makes sense, without even having to speak.

pinkcaravan!

Her music is so dope.

She’s just so good at cultivating. Whenever she does shows in St Louis, I always see heaps of people showing out for her, she’s does so well at controlling her crowds. You know what I’m sayin’? The fact you know about pinkcaravan! is so dope, she’s doing her own thing out here. I’m excited, man.

Matty Wood$

He’s dope. He’s a soulful dude. The music that I have heard has been really soulful and I’ve been like, ‘Oh shit!’.

I’ve been seeing a lot of artists come out who aren’t on some street shit, and I think the biggest way St Louis is changing. A lot of people from St Louis and through a lot of this new generation, there’s been this cool arts scene coming out of it. In the same spot where a lot of these motherfuckers will be on some hood shit, you have next door to it a big old art show going on. A bunch of painters and rappers and writers. It’s a little renaissance in St Louis I haven’t seen in a minute. It’s cool.

RAHLI

He’s been on some street shit, I love it. He’s hard. The energy in his voice, he just sounds like the North Side.

There’s this stigma about St Louis and this is what St Louis is: If you’re from St Louis, you’re from the hood. It don’t matter what fucking part of St Louis you’re from – if you’re from the city, You’re from the hood, no matter where you’re [actually] from. It’s everywhere. Everybody embodied that shit. We’ve still got a lot of street rappers from St Louis who still sound hard, they sound good.

It’s probably the most fun part about doing the album, putting it on stage. I just left rehearsal for my Christmas show [in 2018] that I have every year. I’m doing it in my hometown, so it’s actually the first time I’m playing my album live with my band here. It’s cool, it’s tight. There is a lot of work though that goes into the live show. I’m just looking forward to seeing how it is going to evolve live. It’s an ever-evolving thing with the music; every night you find something new to do.

Interview: SABA

PHOTO CREDIT: Giulia Giannini McGauran
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY LNWY, DECEMBER 2018

“TEENS in Chicago always feel silenced. They always feel the older people just want us to be something that we’re not.”

Rising hip-hop star SABA is sitting across from me in a Melbourne cafe, world’s away from Austin on Chicago’s west side where he grew up.

A city well known for its inner-city violence, Chicago hasn’t always been the most encouraging of environments for young people to chase a lifestyle that hasn’t already been marked out for them. But this was not to be SABA’s path.

An excellent student – “I went to school everyday,” he raps on ‘401K’ from his ComfortZone mixtape – SABA attended open mic nights and youth groups in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighbourhood. These proved to be a creative catalyst, giving him the ability to explore his own ideas and find his voice.

“I had been doing music for almost 10 years by the time I had even gone to an open mic,” the 24-year-old says, looking remarkably fresh for someone who had only step foot off an international flight a day before.

“I knew what I wanted to do, but the open mic [night] was a training ground.”

Like his Chicago peers Noname, Mick Jenkins and Chance The Rapper, SABA was mentored by Brother Mike, whose YouMedia Centre made a huge impact on the area’s emerging hip-hop scene.

“[He] just looked after everybody and he encouraged everybody,” he says of the poet and youth leader, who died in 2014. “The open mics were where we could go and be ourselves.

“For some people, they would become themselves there. I credit a lot of just finding my confidence – finding what I wanted my message to be and who I was as a person – to just going to those open mics and [building] some of those relationships there.”

"If your dad was a car mechanic or something and you grow up and take over the family business one day, that’s what it felt like I was doing."

This confidence and clarity in identity is a strong element of SABA’s music and performance style. The stage is where SABA is truly at home. A poet driven by beats and the vigour of a young artist with an important truth to be spoken, he thrives on the undeniable energy exchanged between himself and the crowd.

“Ridin’ through the city/I’m young, I’m black, I’m guilty,” he laments on ‘BUSY/SIRENS’, a choice cut from his 2018 album CARE FOR ME. “I know ones that want to kill me/They don’t know me, but they fear me.”

BORN Tahj Malik Chandler, SABA grew up surrounded by music and musicians including his father, R&B artist Chandlar, who appears on the outro of SABA’s ComfortZone mixtape.

While his dad lived New York – “He moved there when I was four” – his influence on SABA’s career was profound.

“My upbringing is almost 100 percent responsible for me doing music now,” he says. “A lot of my family did music and my dad still does music. If your dad was a car mechanic or something and you grow up and take over the family business one day, that’s what it felt like I was doing.”

CARE FOR ME paints a textured portrait of his upbringing, marked by humour, self-awareness and grief.

“We really wanted to treat it as if it were a masterpiece,” he says. “It wasn’t ready until it was ready. I didn’t really care if people were going to like it or not. I just wanted to like it myself. I thought that was going to be enough.”

•••

SABA’s emergence as a hip-hop identity to watch with a keen eye dates back to ‘Everybody’s Something’, his 2013 collaboration with Chance The Rapper. It was followed by another guest verse on ‘Angels’ from Chance’s 2016 mixtape Coloring Book. When the album was nominated for a Grammy it boosted his profile considerably. Chance returned the favour on ‘LOGOUT’ from CARE FOR ME, which further explores their seamless dynamic as they bounce off one another on the track.

2012 saw SABA release his debut mixtape in GETCOMFORTable, a fervent collection of music that showed early signs of his potential as one of Chicago’s premier young artists. He followed it up with 2014’s ComfortZone, another showcase of his quick wit and honesty.

SABA’s distinctive sound became part of a new musical tapestry being made in Chicago, threading together strong personal stories and a melting pot of influences beyond hip-hop such as spoken word, jazz, and soul.

Alongside Mick Jenkins, Noname, Smino and Jamila Woods, his music would become a game-changer for young people in the area.

“Back in 2011-2012, when I became close with Noname and Mick Jenkins, we had always seen ourselves as bigger than what a lot of the world had seen us. I think that’s how it has to be as an artist – even as a person in general. You have to see the success for yourself before anybody else can.”

SABA says he can see the ripples of change among the next class of Chicago artists currently making their way. But a lot has changed for him personally since those initial mixtapes and his teen years idolising hometown heroes including Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco.

“I’m not going out much, so I don’t know what the kids are into now,” he says, laughing. “I think I am a little removed back home. Now [Chicago’s] just moving like a machine. There’s always new artists coming up.”

While many areas of the city still battle crime, violence, poverty and oppression, SABA and his extended musical family of artists see themselves as examples of those who made it out and broke the mould.

“There wasn’t really a community in Chicago of artists for a long time so our class [of peers], I feel, made it out of nothing. We saw the importance of it and now, I think the teens now are looking up to us to see the importance of just being together and sticking together.

“There are more opportunities now in the city of Chicago for teens who want to do music or just want to pursue the arts in general,” he continues. “A lot has to do with our class and generation.”

•••

WHERE previous releases offered unfiltered insights into his life and upbringing, CARE FOR ME finds SABA at his candid best.

Threaded through the album are SABA’s thoughts and memories of his cousin, fellow rapper John Walt, who was murdered in 2017. The stories are equal parts bittersweet and harrowing, delivered with nuance and reflection.

“Jesus got killed for our sins/Walter got killed for a coat,” he details on ‘BUSY/SIRENS’. “I’m tryna cope, but it’s a part of me gone/And apparently I’m alone.”

Over the course of the album we learn about the tight bond between the pair; one that extends to SABA’s other family, Chicago collective Pivot Gang.

“Back in 2011-2012, when I became close with Noname and Mick Jenkins, we had always seen ourselves as bigger than what a lot of the world had seen us."

The group – comprising SABA, his brother Joseph Chilliams, childhood friend MFn Melo and fellow rappers Dam Dam, Frsh Waters, Daoud and daedaePIVOT – has been a driving force in Chicago’s independent hip-hop community since 2012.

Pivot is more than just a name, however, it’s a safe zone for SABA. His debut Australian show in Melbourne in December 2018 was a prime example of how Pivot has grown into a more global community, with sections of the audience chanting their name. That growth puts a smile on SABA’s face.

“I want [future records] to be completely different from what I did this year and the year before.” he enthuses. “I don’t want to be an artist who creates the same thing. We’re at the point now where we kind of have a ‘sound’, but I want to keep expanding on it and keep building it. Keep it different.”

Even though CARE FOR ME details heavy loss and heartbreak, SABA considers it a strong step forward for him as an artist and a cathartic one for him personally.

If anything, creating this work has given SABA the opportunity to heal, while simultaneously opening up new facets of his creative voice.

“Each album is like a chapter of my life,” he explains. “I view projects in general as an easy way to get a lot off of your chest.”