Drop 7 EP - Little Simz: Review
Review by Lav:
Little Simz has EASILY been one of my favorite artists of the 2020s so far. The intense and lyrically sharp rapper kicked the decade off with her impressive Drop 6 EP which I liked a good bit and landed on my EPs of the year list at the end of 2020. But following that project she kicked it into another gear. In 2021 she dropped her masterpiece Sometimes I Might Be Introvert which would easily land among my favorite albums of the decade so far. She followed it up with the more direct and also pretty impressive No Thank You just over a year later. Now she's returning to the EP format for a series of shorter songs that see her working out some impressive new directions.
The most defining shift on the album is a turn towards darker beats and stiff drum machine. That starts right out of the gate with Mood Swings which sees Simz matching that sonic palette with a quieter but still intense delivery. It frequently erupts out of that sonic style only to return to the more stark sound which makes for a great feedback loop. The track Power is a huge highlight that lasts just under a minute. Simz fills the track with hard-hitting flows and some of the best lyrical gems on the entire project.
Torch feels like a challenge Simz gives herself to speed up her flows and she is more than ready to meet it. Even without her fieriest delivery, she manages to avoid getting swallowed by this insane beat. Speaking of challenges Simz continues to prove her versatility on the more sentimental closer Far Away. It features some of the jazz-inspired warmth Simz often dabbles in on her records and the more I digested the way the piano just elevates everything around it the song sounded better and better to me.
My first reaction to Fever was admittedly how much the vocal samples make the beat sound like Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B's Bongos only for there to be actual bongos later on in the track. The refrains are just okay with Simz singing coming off a little dry but her multi-lingual verse is still quite impressive. SOS is one of the longer songs on the EP and more than half of it is an instrumental introduction. Even as it does get to the point where Simz comes in she sounds pretty casual and the song mostly coasts on its good flavors. I Ain't Feel It is funny enough the only song on the record I'm not really a fan of with this murky vocal mix and a lumpy trap beat that makes the song feel like almost any rapper could have made it.
In a sense, I think Drop 7 achieves exactly what it sets out to. These shorter and more rough-around-the-edge songs are less about the tracks themselves and more about displaying the promise of where Simz will go next. Even then though, these songs are impressive and the versatility she displays throughout is nearly unmatched by any of her peers. Even without her best material and sharpest focus in her bag, Simz is still capable of running laps around her competition. 7/10
For more Little Simz check out my review of Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and No Thank You
