Lotus is gentle and beautiful like the flower, representing growth and rebirth alike for Little Simz who continues to stun and slay in every capacity
Release date: June 6, 2025 | AWAL Recordings | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | TikTok | Stream/Purchase
It’s funny sometimes, when I listen to music files on my phone and I’m not paying the most attention, I’ll play albums out of order. The fault is usually on some mixture of the metadata not being great and either scrambling the track list order or just ordering it alphabetically, or Poweramp – my chosen music player app – being weird. I’m going with the latter for blaming me thinking that Little Simz‘s new album began with “Blood”, alphabetically the first song on Lotus. It’s a shame too because it made for a powerful intro to a powerful album.
Lotus is a very fitting title for this album because it’s Little Simz returning to form in more ways than one. Sonically, it’s much more stripped back than her last couple albums, especially her massively successful and immense album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, and the AOTY list-shattering NO THANK YOU that dropped mid-December 2022 was more of the same in a good way. Thematically and stylistically, it’s a rebirth, something the lotus flower represents, especially within Buddhist and Hindu religion and culture. There’s a lot to say on here about childhood, youth, and what you bring from it into adulthood, like Simz rebirthed herself to retread those steps to now.
Surprising no one, it’s a beautiful endeavor with some of the best features she’s landed so far in her career. It brought me back to the more homely and ethereal approach that was on GREY Area, my first Little Simz album – damn, what an intro. Simz is still using robust and lovely live instrumentation that slants heavily toward jazz, almost doubling down on it with the involvement of drummer Yussef Dayes. He appears on the title track with Michael Kiwanuka and it’s an extraordinary piece that ends up being the most resplendent song on the album, Simz digging deep within herself lyrically over lush production that makes for a classical feel and the absolute centerpiece of the album despite actually being toward the end of Lotus.
Allowing for a neat diversity among song themes and moods, that’s what you can expect across all of Lotus. It actually feels nice to see her return to a simpler modality with her music, where there’s still a largeness and open air to the compositions she commands over with her English elocution and cadence. Even the smaller moments deserve particular praise though. I immediately think of “Peace” with singers Miraa May and the great Moses Sumney. Armed with just a light piano, acoustic guitar, and some other airy accouterments, it makes for such a sweet, gentle intermission of sorts between the more bombastic tracks. Simz muses on introspection, failures, and grace given to ourselves when we’re young and growing in a world that’s so openly hostile – ‘How can we sleep when there’s murders in the streets?‘. Simply, it’s about finding peace among it all, but even a simple concept like that is elevated by everyone involved to create this serene atmosphere that gives you chills. It’s already one of my favorite songs of the year.
One (of many) standout moments on Lotus is the cheeky “Young” which sees Simz embody the 20s of someone ‘young and dumb‘ without a care in the world… only as someone much, much older desperately digging into her lost youth by the fingernails. It doesn’t seem autobiographical in the rebirth sense, more wishing to return to that younger age when you didn’t have as much responsibility, just living, life, and love on the mind, not only surviving as is usually the case. At first I thought back to Frank Ocean‘s “Super Rich Kids” and its portrayal of reckless youth that grew up with loose parenting and too much money to know what to do with, but “Young” has a bit more of a satirical edge to it with lines referring to having ‘fuck-me-up pumps and a Winehouse quiff‘ and ‘I speak a lot of French – oui oui oui‘, and the video portrays Simz as a feisty woman almost three times her actual age. The makeup and grill are astonishingly convincing, and I love her exaggerated physical acting to go with the more pronounced and haughty vocal inflections.
Lotus is more proof that Little Simz hasn’t stopped thinking – about love, herself, the world, childhood, growth, all of it. Lots to think about, lots to expound on, lots to distill through our lived experiences. Why listen to her rap about it? Well, it’s great shit for one – the way Simz presents herself and her thoughts is nearly unparalleled in approach and quality. She doesn’t settle for lesser when it comes to the music she accompanies her voice with, her candor is easy to relate to even if her experience is far from my own, and you just wanna see her do well. Simz has long been an artist to root for and, if nothing else, Lotus provides a more down-to-earth reason why. Cynically, it might be more of the same from her, but to say that would be to dismiss the growth she continues to make and the choices that allow this album to stand out among an already impressive, GOAT-level discography.
Even when I thought “Blood” opened the album with its sibling trauma processing and heart-on-sleeve emotional parsing, Lotus felt perfectly ordered. Without disrespecting what Little Simz intended for Lotus as a body of work, it doesn’t really matter what order to hear it in because everyone’s journey is different. Maybe “Blood” makes sense to go first to help you reflect on growing up in a divided family teeming with resentment and unaddressed issues that built you, or maybe you’re older and “Young” helps you smile while thinking back on your youth when you were young and dumb, and what it taught you in your older age. Perhaps “Free” is the best intro to remind yourself to love as hard as you can and be loved in return no matter where you’re at in life. Finding your life’s roadmap through Lotus is part of the fun, and if you find something unfamiliar or unexperienced yet, then press play and study ahead. You might just be ready for whatever comes your way as a result.
Artist photo by Thibaut Grevet
