Little Simz concert: Sometimes introverted, just not today

Llittle Simz is a musician whose performance can be imagined in an evening dress with a string orchestra or in a hoodie with a sound system. Her music manages with a light hand to combine her very personal raps, which mediate between anger and a clear social analysis, with the orchestral opulence of southern soul, the coolness of eighties electronics and intricate African rhythms.

On Sunday evening, the British artist opted for the hoodie variant with sunglasses and baseball cap, literally helping the frenetic U-30 audience at Frankfurt’s Zoom music club to get going.

“Energy” was the most used word in their announcements. And indeed, a remarkable connection develops between the 28-year-old Londoner with Nigerian roots and her audience.

She interprets the elegant songs of her current album “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert” very dynamically, among the titles of the previous album “Grey Area” there are some fast and rhythmic ones that make her fans move by themselves.

“Frankfurt, I need your energy”, she calls out to them to their hit “Selfish”. “My best friend is I,” she sings in it and provides a little guide on how to get through life more easily as an egocentric. The audience contributes text-safe.

“Protect My Energy” is the name of one of her songs from the latest album, which picks up on her motto. With his reminiscences of Prince, he marks the electronic extreme of their repertoire – “Point and Kill” refers most clearly to their African roots.

Again and again Little Simz, who was born as Simbiatu Ajikawo in the British capital, throws autobiographical chunks into the room. “Growing up, people didn’t think I could do anything,” she said in an announcement. But the all-rounder played in English television series early on, recorded her first rap titles as a teenager, founded her own record label Age 101 and has since been nominated several times for important music awards.

The initials of her record “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert” spell out Simbi, another nickname given to her by friends along with her stage name. She has been friends with the musician Dean Josiah Cover since she was a child. With the stage name Inflo he has meanwhile become the most respected music producer in the country.

The guild of musicians who have had him support range from The Kooks to Michael Kiwanuka to Adele. His own project, Sault, has shown unprecedented creativity and productivity over the past few years. Inflo is co-composer on all tracks of Little Simz’ fourth album.

Halfway through the concert, the Frankfurt concert hall is bathed in red light. Little Simz pulls the hood of her red hoodie over the cap. The bombastic string riff of the album’s title song “Introvert” fills the entire hall, which by the way is the best-sounding one in Frankfurt. Something between Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm and Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds in effect, but much angrier. A classic for the 1920s.

Here are all her personal issues that she denounces: corruption and racism – “Parts of the world still living in apartheid” – and finally the question of how she personally puts herself on it: “Sometimes I could be introverted.” You need one License to feel inner wounds.

Discussions left open whether Simz, the artist, or Simbi, the girlfriend, was meant. The song is a document of artistic reflection in this decade. “One day I’m wordless, next day I’m a wordsmith,” she sings, continuing that her only hope is to reach the goal of her role model, Amy Winehouse.

The best songs from their repertoire create this poignancy from social circumstances and personal concern. In the solemn Little Q, with its irresistible la-la-la melody and choral arrangement to match, her lyrical self raps about the life of a 14-year-old girl in south London, about a life-threatening injury, an absent father, a brother in prison.

Little Simz looks like the female equivalent of Los Angeles rap genius Kendrick Lamar. She is similarly imaginative and open to musical influences. Her multifacetedness is challenging, but she manages to consistently weave her genre role models into her own style. Like Lamar’s, her charisma is extraordinary, and her qualities as a rapper are remarkable.

But the most remarkable thing is her songwriting, this joy in creating melodies that you won’t soon forget, making them unmistakable through arrangements and singing about social circumstances, which she makes relentlessly visible.