Album Review: Lotus by Little Simz

Simz has lost none of the orchestral sweep Inflo helped cultivate—Lotus is as cinematic as anything on Introvert—but she gains pliability, an ability to pivot from various sounds within a verse.

Courtesy of AWAL Recordings Ltd.

Little Simz and this sixth studio album are already freighted with expectation, yet the record rejects any temptation to coast on her Glastonbury coronation last summer. Lotus follows the crystals-shining self-assurance of No Thank You and the quick-strike EP Drop 7, but the new record’s guiding image is less about defiant victory laps than about tenacity as the lotus flower that blooms out of swamp water. Public filings earlier this spring revealed a £1.7 million loan dispute with longtime collaborator Inflo, and the emotional fallout soaks into the first stretch of the album without feeling like gossip bait. Instead, Simz treats the courtroom anxiety as raw material for a study in resilience, placing her own name on the line and daring to read the personal ledger right alongside the track list.

The product we received is an album that treats pain as rocket fuel, transforming private grievances into exhilaratingly public art and, in the process, stretching Little Simz’s language, cadence, and sonic reach further than at any point since Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. The metaphor isn’t window dressing. In a February conversation on BBC Radio 1, she explained that a lotus “proves you can rise in less-than-ideal conditions,” and the record’s structure reflects that conviction. Early singles we’ve heard (which all sounded different) bear scratchy surfaces, then give way to sections where melody seems to breathe for the first time, as if petals are prying themselves open. Rather than wallow, Simz keeps toggling between measured reflection and forward motion, a deliberate refusal to let any single mood monopolise the runtime.

A fresh production partner helps with that elasticity. Miles Clinton James—best known in live-jazz circles but equally comfortable with MPC swings—handles most of the boards. The drums crack wider than on the Inflo-helmed trilogy that defined her last half-decade, but roomy bass and hand-played guitar keep the mix earthy. Yussef Dayes contributes brushy cymbal chatter on the title song, while horns flicker through “Lion” in ways that recall the diaspora-rooted groove of Obongjayar’s own catalog. Sampha appears later in the sequence for “Blue,” his vaporous tenor sliding between Simz’s syllables like a cooling agent. The combination avoids the maximalist reverie of SIMBI without stripping away detail; you can still hear fret noise and air in the room, but there’s little orchestral gloss distracting from the verses.

That focus is most arresting on “Thief,” a four-minute salvo in which Simz addresses the Inflo standoff head-on. Her cadence stays steady, almost conversational, as she catalogues broken promises and unreturned calls, creating tension by resisting vocal fireworks. Two songs later, “Hollow” digs deeper over an orchestral composition, the rhyme schemes slowing just enough to suggest exhaustion mid-bar; it’s less a diss track than an autopsy of trust. There’s bitterness, but she aims it outward sparingly, flipping back to self-scrutiny in lines that ask what lessons she missed while chasing big-stage dreams. The restraint gives the record its pulse, where even the anger is tempered by an editor’s eye for what actually serves the long game.

Throughout, Clinton’s production is crucial. Others have mounted him as Simz’s “creative executor,” a partner who translates her whim into multi-genre clarity. Where Inflo often built cathedral-sized crescendos, Clinton prefers modular rooms that can shift within a single bar. The approach suits Simz’s diaristic writing: instead of grand tableaus, we get quick-cut montage, each shot revealing another angle on the same hurt. The low-end remains thick—the bass on “Flood” could crack concrete—but every instrument feels placed to maximise negative space rather than overwhelm it. The first single teased in February, Obongjayar’s grainy alto and Moonchild Sanelly’s squeaky exhortations form a chorus that feels like multiple consciences chiming at once. The beat pivots between clipped Afro-percussion and a descending synth motif, evoking a nightclub just before the lights come up. Rather than recount industry woes, Simz talks storm drains and rising sea levels, turning a natural disaster allegory into a commentary on information overload. It’s topical without indulging in didactic finger-wagging, affirmed by how casually she tosses off the line “too many screens, too little sight.”

Mid-album, the temperature shifts. “Young” pairs rim-shot snaps with neon keyboard streaks as Simz reflects on playground friendships that calcified into obligations, then bridges to “Only,” a sneaky earworm built on Lydia Kitto’s ghosted-soul refrain. The trio of “Free,” “Peace,” and “Hollow” acts as the heart’s pacemaker. On “Free,” she raps over a hand-clap loop and grainy string stabs, insisting that liberation starts with refusing to internalise other people’s timelines. “Peace” lowers the BPM; Moses Sumney’s falsetto hovers above Miraa May’s conversational alto while Simz lists small rituals, stretching before dawn, checking in on elders, that help her stay grounded. None of it sounds like mindfulness soundtrack filler because the writing remains tactile; every memory is attached to a street name or bus route, and the production leaves imperfection (fret buzz, tape hiss) audible.

What most distinguishes Lotus, though, is tonal range. Thematically, it is easy to frame the album as a litigation diary set to music, as if every track is collateral damage from the Inflo fallout. Yet the record resists that flattening. Even in the darkest cuts, there is an undercurrent of rebirth. Simz keeps returning to water, mud, and the delicate biology of growth. Scholars of Yoruba cosmology would hear her invocation of the lotus not just in Buddhist terms, but also as akin to Ọ̀ṣun, the river deity of sweetness and renewal. Those cultural resonances are never explicit, but they give depth to Simz’s insistence that a “dirty bloom” can still perfume its surroundings.

Late in the record, camaraderie becomes the organising principle. “Lion” loops Obongjayar back in for a chant-heavy celebration of West African strength, with polyrhythms that flirt with highlife. “Enough” enlists Yukimi Nagano from Little Dragon; her cool phrasing slips around Simz’s tight internal rhymes, pushing the rapper to elongate her vowels in response. “Blood,” an intergenerational debate staged with Wretch 32 and Cashh, underscores the stakes of fame when parents still rely on your stability. It’s conversational, at times uncomfortable, but the trio never treats conflict as spectacle. Instead, they circle back to the refrain “hold your people close,” turning family drama into a communal mantra.

The title song feels like the sunrise after a sleepless night. Michael Kiwanuka’s grainy guitar arpeggios brush against Dayes’s ride cymbal patterns, while a distant vocal sample (reportedly recorded in a Lagos hotel corridor) underlines the record’s border-hopping DNA. Simz raps in short, clipped phrases, then lengthens into almost sung cadences, sketching out vows to keep creating even when lawsuits, market chatter, and streaming-era burnout tempt her to retreat. There’s no bombastic climax, no key-change heroics, just a slow dissolve into silence that trusts the listener to sit with whatever emotions remain.

Taken as a whole, Lotus is more compact than the cinematic sprawl of Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, yet it offers a broader emotional gradient than the terse sermons of No Thank You. The absence of Inflo—both as a producer and as a friend—creates space for new tonal experiments: grittier drum programming, lighter harmonic textures, and a more intricate network of featured voices. That openness occasionally courts drift; “Lonely” circles its main melody a few too many times, and “Blue” leans heavily on Sampha’s vocal aura without fully integrating his perspective into the narrative arc. Still, minor lapses never upend the core intent, which is to document transformation in real time rather than to polish a definitive statement.

Simz has said in interviews that she keeps one foot in acting to preserve the excitement of rap. You can hear that multidisciplinary discipline here, where every verse she spits feels like a stage moment, and every hook is choreographed to spotlight a different collaborator. As a whole, the record never feels like a vanity project. Instead, it reads as a field report from someone unafraid to let the messiness show. The lawsuit may have forced her to confront the limits of trust, but Lotus implies that transparency is its own kind of wealth. Even the flower on the sleeve, with pink petals flecked with flecks of studio dust, seems to wink at the idea that beauty can coexist with debris.

She keeps returning to two questions (what freedom costs and who helps pay), and she resists squeezing them into slogans. Double-entendres do more work than overt messages; autobiographical details surface, slide away, then echo back from a different angle a few tracks later. A few wonder whether the lighter detours blunt its sting, yet even those sceptics concede that Simz’s pen has sharpened, her rhythmic pocket grown wider, and her instinct for collaboration matured. This work trusts incremental change, letting grime under the fingernails coexist with fresh petals above the waterline. The lotus motif isn’t a branding exercise so much as a compass: bloom, yes, but remember where the roots still sit.

The lotus flower blooms, botanists remind us, because the mud is nutrient-dense. Without muck, no blossom. Little Simz seems to have absorbed that botany lesson in her bones. If there is a takeaway, it is that personal upheaval can yield art that refuses to traffic in misery tourism. Lotus doesn’t beg for sympathy, nor does it deny pain. It marks a hinge point, turning grievances into grooves and worries into rhythmic architecture. In the end, the record trusts process over perfection, presence over posture. Whether future releases return to baroque strings or chase even leaner arrangements, Simz has made clear that the mud around her roots is part of the bloom. A blueprint for turning hurt into heat, and heat into light that might outlast the storm. That truth, once heard, is hard to unsee—and even harder to ignore the next time her name pops up on your release radar.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Thief,” “Hollow,” “Lotus”