Little Simz on vulnerability

Lately I’ve been attached to Little Simz’s album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (2021) by the hip. I don’t usually listen to rap much, and honestly when I do, I don’t often care about the lyrics. (I know, it’s like missing the whole point about rap.)

There was something different about Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. The first track I found was the single Woman, which came as a Youtube recommendation. I was hooked on the groove for weeks. The lyrics were great too, but it was mostly the ultra-chill, low frequency vibes that got me. Spotify eventually nudged me to listen to her whole album, so I did, front to back, and found myself really enjoying every song.

Then I saw her 2021 NPR Tiny Desk concert. Oh my!

I’d previously listened to the song I Love You, I Hate You (5:26 in the above video) a couple of times, not knowing at all the context of the song and not really listening to the words. In her Tiny Desk, she introduces this song by saying:

“It took a lot to write the song. I’m very proud of myself for writing it, had to dig deep and dig somewhere that is very uncomfortable, but I think it made for a positive result.”

That got my attention, so I kept my ears attended to the lyrics. And then – duh! – I realised it was about Little Simz’s absent father.

Maybe ’cause you’re in my DNA, that’s why
(I love you)
(I hate you)

My ego won’t fully allow me to say that I miss you (I love you)
A woman who hasn’t confronted all her daddy issues (I hate you)

Is you a sperm donor or a dad to me?

I listened to this song, and the whole album, multiple times on end – this time paying much closer attention to the lyrics. One day on a bus I was listening to I Love You, I Hate You again, when towards the end of the song I heard this lyric and actually started crying.

He was just once a boy, often I seem to forget
Lookin’ at Polaroids of pictures secretly kept
You know what was destroyed, but you don’t know what was left

The beginning of I Love You, I Hate You is punchy, with a steeled resentment, as she throws daggers at her subject. But it starts to show its cracks around the middle, with lines like “Never thought my parent would give me my first heartbreak“.

Then near the end of the song, she passes the mic to her father’s own brokenness. Underneath the hurt and anger, she chooses to see him as an individual, a child, and tries to reckon with this knowledge.

I felt like I was looking at something so intimate that it wasn’t for me to see. It reminded me of the times I had to reckon with the actions of someone close to me in a “how could you — yet you were only human and you had your reasons — but what about me” kind of way. The fact that she gave someone who’d hurt her so much sympathy, and in doing so tore down her own walls instead of building them up, struck me as vulnerable. But it was vulnerable in an empowered kind of way.

I Love You, I Hate You is a whole package of emotional complexity, but it’s not confined to this song. Amidst the typical playfulness or arrogance of a rap album, lashing out told-you-sos and look-at-me-nows, in Sometimes I Might Be Introvert you’ll suddenly discover these moments of sincere vulnerability.

You want my everything until there’s nothing left of me
I just wanted you to call me, sayin’, “Hey, sis, how’s your day been?
How’s your love life? Who you datin’?
Oh, he fucked up? Girl, I had the same thing
But there’s a bigger picture God is painting”
It’s hard mixing family and business

Miss Understood (on her strained relationship with her sister)

Jazmine just had a daughter, man, she’s so gorgeous
Told me life is givin’ life and I’m so for it
Maybe one day

Standing Ovation

But if I don’t takе this winner’s flight, that’s career suicide
Though I should’ve been a friend when your grandma died

Introvert

Shit changed when I had a brief encounter with death
Thought the pearly gates opened when that knife was in my chest
Not the mental scars, the physical’s all you see
But the boy that stabbed me is just as damaged as me
I could have been the reflection that he hated
The part of him he wishes God did not waste time creating
The broken homes in which we’re comin’ from, but who’s to blame when
You’re dealt the same cards from the system you’re enslaved in?

Little Q, Pt. 2 (on someone who stabbed her, by the way)

The way she expresses her vulnerability, and her empathy and love and longing and reason, is something that inspires me so much. I can’t help but contrast it with the often unapologetic sense of ego and masculinity in other male artists’ works.

Very simply, I think I relate too hard to her music, and this is the kind of rap I want more of. It’s also hard not to imprint on anything that makes me cry in a bus.