I'm addicted to Little Simz's "Gorilla"
“That confidence, that bravado. It’s me, being unapologetically myself, and I’m gonna tell the whole world about it."
A frame from Little Simz's new video for Gorilla.
In December 2022, Little Simz released her 7th studio album, NO THANK YOU. As it should, it was received with great praise. Pitchfork gave it a 7.7, NME gave it four stars, as did Rolling Stone.
On June 21, she released the first music video from the album. The song, Gorilla, has been on a loop on my phone for God knows how long. It’s currently the top song in my On Repeat playlist on Spotify.
When I saw the video was out, I immediately clicked. And boy, she does not hold back.
But first, the song. The horns hit you immediately, dripping with bravado. Then come the low-key, effortlessly cool bass riff and hi-hats. The boom-bap drums, not trying too hard, sound simultaneously refreshing and classic.
The grandiosity of the brass section immediately halted by the aloof bass and drums had me laying on the floor the first time I heard it — goosebumps formed at the top of my head. I couldn’t help but nod along and feel like the coolest person in the world.
Her main inspiration when making the track was A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory. She says, “There’s something about the bass and the drums combined that is enough, along with my vocal. That is the song there. We can dress it and add little things, but something about just bass and drums is really special.”
“The grandiosity of the brass section immediately halted by the aloof bass and drums had me laying on the floor the first time I heard it.”
Now back to the video. The visuals, so captivating, perfectly convey the confidence of the instrumental. Her experimenting with effects (floating in the sky, ascending, dancing with headless men in a field), her visual homages to Kendrick Lamar, and the doodles jumping around the screen, the breathing collage of her face; all keep me locked in for the whole 4 minutes and 5 seconds.
She joyrides a BMW; she flies down a parking lot ramp laying on a skateboard; she graffitis a wall wearing a hoodie I want very badly. (Side note: that's the *book V2 hoodie she made collaborating with Seventh to promote her book. Yes, she also has a book, and I also want it very badly. But these things are incomprehensibly expensive, so I’ll have to save up for six months.)
In all seriousness, Little Simz has recently become a massive inspiration to me. The way she shares her vulnerability and humanity while still having that bravado is so admirable. The album is beautiful, full of this vulnerability, exuding hope and perseverance.
She makes me want to create things for the joy of it. For knowing that I can make something great, but also for playing and experimenting. She makes me feel that I can create my best work and that I should be proud of it. It’s her subtle, unbreakable confidence meshed with her openness that makes me – in the simplest terms – believe in myself.
Her confidence is not flashy. It doesn’t scream from the rooftops or hear huge jewellery. This is evident in the video, where she wears quite normal clothes: the enviable hoodie, double denim, baggy suits, and baseball caps.
The same goes for the instrumental: it’s almost untouchable yet not unapproachable. It lets you know it’s in the room, and you can’t shake it, but it doesn’t beg for attention. It lures you in with its laid-back self-assurance. Never ostentatious, but never apologetic either. She says it herself in the song: “Introvert, but she ain’t timid.”
“It’s her subtle, unbreakable confidence meshed with her openness that makes me – in the simplest terms – believe in myself.”
As a person, Little Simz lives and breathes art – in music, writing, photography, acting, in video. Every choice she makes is deliberate and careful, and it shows.
Something she mentions about the outro of the song stuck with me, and it can be applied to how she approaches anything she creates. She says, “I could’ve left it at [the last horns with the backing vocals]. But, you just wanna do the extra bow on it and see it off and be like, there you go.”
She always adds the extra bow. Much more than the bare minimum, she constantly asks herself what is the best she can do and doesn’t stop until that is the result.
This is what will make her art live on. In her words: “I’m not trying to make music for the time. I’m not trying to make music for now or for the summer. I want to make music that’s gonna live on. I want Gorilla to be a banger in 2050.”
