I can see how an artist can get tainted, frustrated
Angel
They don’t care if your mental is on the brink of somethin’ dark
As long as your cuttin’ somebody’s pay slip
And sendin’ their kids to private school in a spaceship
Yeah, I refuse to be on a slave ship
Give me all my masters and lower your wages
Simbiatu Ajikawo basically did it all with their 2021 album ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’. Critically lauded. The proper breakthrough album. The Mercury Prize. It only took them 12 years and four albums to be named the ‘Best New Artist’ at the 2022 Brit Awards. For an artist as challenging and as esoteric as Simz, this was as big as she was ever likely to get. It was kind of amazing that a grime-adjacent black, female British experimental rapper was allowed to get as big as Simz did. Sure, they’re not Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeren, Ted Nugent levels of inescapability amongst squillion dollar tours, but they were surely one down from that? And they really did work hard for it, they really did make it off a London council estate and to the cover of Vogue magazine. They really did make it from the bottom. Now they’re here.
They’re here, right? They’ve made it? It’s all done now?
But instead they’d just ensured that they were a more valuable commodity. It meant that she would have to attend more press conferences, shake more hands, engage in more facile promotion. Her success meant that they had to work harder now that the people in control of their capital started to appreciate their surplus value. Simz probably made a relative pittance from one of the most critically successful records of 2021, but she might have driven more people to streaming sites. Perhaps they convinced a couple of dudes to get a Spotify Premium subscription? They became a notable figure for the algorithm to base advertisements off of. The independent label Simz were on were eaten up by Sony for $430 million, yet Simz was forced to cancel a US tour simply because they couldn’t afford it. It. Fucking. Stinks.
You should be angry. Simz certainly is. The album title might refer to Simz finally reaching breaking point with all the times she’s been expected to say “thank you” over the past few years for the scraps they’re given from the table. Their bosses/masters might be “their kids to private school in a spaceship”, but look, Simz! Here’s a Q Award for ‘Best Vocal Performance’, whatever the fuck that means! We’re all winners, really. The record could have just easily be called ‘No, Actually, Fuck You!’.
On ‘No Thank You’, Simz doesn’t just chew out these owners of capital and the neoslavery that they’re all working within, she does so while exhibiting what a fucking talent you are messing with here! I was probably the one person in the world who didn’t love ‘SIMBI‘, because to me the music too often felt overwrought and unnecessary. It seemed like an obvious and conscious effort to make an epic sounding album in an attempt to knock people over the head with the importance of the themes being discussed. Like, have you heard Little Simz?? Simz has one of the strongest, most authoritative, and most dang BIG voices in rap. Backing that up with 100 piece orchestras is like souping up your Ferrari by gluing a dozen more tyres all over the chassis. Like, dude, I don’t think you understand how cars work.
So here Simz just brings it back to basics, and shows that their talent is one that needs no accoutrements. This is Simz stripping everything away to remind the listener (and themselves?) that this is what brought them to the table, this is why people fell in love with them in the first place, and this is what they do better than anyone else in the world. And I mean that last part: if we’re talking purely on technique, purely on their ability with words, what they say and how they make it sound, there isn’t a better rapper on Earth than Simz. I believe that I am complimenting their ‘flow’, but I dunno, nothing gives me the ick more than pale white boys using hip hop terminology. No cap.
Oh, and she does this with banger after banger after banger, mind! Sorry, I feel like I was giving the impression that this is some cold dark night of the soul, a joyless journey through capitalism’s treadmill, but it both slaps and fucks.
Sim, Simma.
Who got the keys
To my bloodclart bimma?
Necessary Evil 
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