Video: Little Simz, ‘Good For What’

Cassandra Cronin on October 13th, 2017

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As the most popular and culturally prevalent genre today, hip-hop offers some of the greatest music out there and along with it, a slew of supersized characters and weirdos. To refer to mainstream hip-hop as a cult of personality would be to belie its artistic value, yet female rappers often find themselves cordoned off into the “alternative” side of things unless they manage to turn themselves into a sort of meme. Thankfully, a stint as the sole supporting act for the Gorillaz on a U.K. tour (and a cameo at the recent Forum show) put Little Simz on our radar, and with the lyrical agility and audacious production to stand eye-to-eye with the biggest heads in the genre, the world is hers to keep.

Coming off the critical acclaim of last year’s concept album “Stillness in Wonderland” and her 2015 debut “A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons,” the London-born Little Simz (nee Simbiatu “Simbi” Ajikawo) has made her mark by running her own label, producing her own music and receiving contributions and accolades from the likes of Syd, Badbadnotgood, Kendrick Lamar and Yasiin Bey. At just 23 years old, Simz stays humble in the face of her marvelous success that comes through as one of her principal strengths, permeating even her most bombastic and bravado-inducing tracks. The interplay between the fearsome vastness of her inner universe and her limitations as a human mortal materializes as genre-fluid hip-hop, molding together the West Coast speaker-knocking cool of artists like Souls of Mischief and Kamaiyah, with the jazz-fluent arrangements of contemporaries Kendrick Lamar and the slick R&B (in this case: rhythm & bars) of Rapsody and Blackalicious.

On Tuesday night, Little Simz appeared on the BET Hip Hop Awards Cypher with 6lack, Mysonne, Axel Leon and Tee Grizzley S, and dropped a new video for the trap banger “Good For What” the very next day. “Good For What” will appear on the deluxe edition of 2016’s “Stillness in Wonderland,” along with seven new tracks, due Nov. 3.

||| Watch: The video for “Good for What”