Lotus
In the two and a half years since 2022’s *NO THANK YOU*, Little Simz attempted to write its follow-up four times, to no avail. From the outside, the London native was at the top of her game. Since 2021’s game-changing fourth album, *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert*, she’d won a Mercury Prize, owned the Glastonbury stage, and earned a spot among the power players of UK rap. But privately, her personal life was imploding. In 2025, word spread of the lawsuit Simz had filed against Inflo, the childhood friend and longtime collaborator who’d produced her last three albums, for allegedly failing to repay a 1.7-million-pound loan. The betrayal left the rapper at a loss, as she recounts on “Lonely”: “Sitting in the studio with my head in my hands/Thinking what am I to do with this music I can’t write?” From this turmoil, the 31-year-old musician arrived at a breakthrough that manifests on her sixth album, *Lotus*—named for the flower that thrives in muddy waters. Here Simz pulls no punches on the topic of her former friend, snarling her way through the bluesy opener “Thief” (“This person I’ve known my whole life, coming like the devil in disguise”) and the eerie “Flood,” produced by Miles Clinton James with cameos from Nigerian British pop star Obongjayar and South Africa’s Moonchild Sanelly. But the mood lifts on tracks like “Young,” a bit of post-punk method rapping on being dumb, broke, and alive (“A bottle of Rio and some chicken and chips/In my fuck-me-up pumps and my Winehouse quiff”), and on “Free,” a jazzy boom-bap meditation on love versus fear, on which Simz reaches a cathartic conclusion: “Love is every time I put pen to the page.”
The UK rapper battled self-doubt and legal woes in the run-up to her sixth album; now, however, framed by uncluttered jazz- and rock-influenced production, she sounds in command and at ease.
Lotus toes the line between disparate emotions, ripping apart betrayal, mourning loss, and celebrating Simz as the revenant messiah of Conscious Rap.
The rapper strips back the polish for her most vulnerable, soul-searching project yet – one that hits hard, even when it drifts
Rather than isolating herself, Simz instead turns to trusted friends to lift her up, from soul singer Michael Kiwanuka to jazz drummer Yussef Dayes
A confessional album that owes more to belief and soul-searching rather than a sense of direction, Lotus sees Little Simz blossoming into new light.
Awakening the artist’s exploration of her sonically expansive sound ability, Little Simz goes deeper than surface-level experimentation - she unleashes a
The Mercury Prize-winning rapper reflects on a dark year in the music industry to disturbingly powerful effect. Plus, the week’s best songs