The GB Album Club 004 - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert by Little Simz

Duders! Welcome to part four of the Unofficial Giant Bomb Album Club! For our third pick, we went metal with Rivers of Nihil’s Where Owls Know My Name, and it was a real headbanger’s ball of a time. So how do you follow up a heavy prog metal album, other than with my HILARIOUS Headbanger's Ball pun? With some neo-soul infused hip hop, of course! This week, our album is Sometimes I Might Be Introvert by Little Simz! This album was submitted to the pool by @chaser324, and here’s where you can listen:

Spotify

Apple Music

Youtube

To participate in the Unofficial Giant Bomb Album Club, all you need to do is listen to the album and comment with your thoughts! But if you want to go one step further, join our Discord! Normally I'd say this is where you can submit your own picks to our pool, but as all the current Discord members are eager to finish up what we have on our plate so we can pick new albums, we're not taking new submissions. But if you want to be in on our next cycle, or you just want to hang out and talk some music shit with some nice folks, you're more than welcome to join and we'd love to have you!

I love all forms of music, but I do have home bases. Primarily, hip hop, soul, and jazz. Or, to be more specific (and indulgent), late 90s/early 2000s Soulquarian rap and R&B, 60s and 70s soul, and a wide spectrum of jazz that I don't quite know how to narrow down for context's sake. Given that these are my tentpole sounds, it was basically for granted that I was going to love the absolute shit out of this album.

Also there's the minor detail that this is the first album for this club that I've already listened to before and I put it at number 2 on my top 10 albums of 2021 list. Plus Little Simz's previous album, GREY Area, was number 1 in 2019.

First and foremost, there's the aesthetic. Inflo, the primary producer on this album, is increasingly becoming one of my favorite producers working right now. Given his work with Michael Kiwanuka, Cleo Sol, and Sault, I already knew he has a masterful handle on the kind of soul sounds that are right up my alley, and here he meshes that sound perfectly into a hip hop context. But I also love the new territories being explored by both Inflo and Simz, what with the synth-pop for "Protect My Energy" and the African pop and jazz arrangements on "Point and Kill" and "Fear No Man." I even love the orchestral stuff on the interludes and the opening track because of how bombastic and clean they sound.

There's also the lyrical content. Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is a celebration of the self. A meditation on the need to find some sort of center and accept yourself after you've been put through the emotional ringer or your personality and worldview doesn't naturally fit with the success you've found. It is, simply put, a positive mental health album. Moreover, it's a positive mental health album that doesn't shy from the darkness, such as her fractured relationship with her father, the near murder of her cousin, and the various social systems that keep people trapped in poverty and misery. Balance, this album suggests, can't be found with platitudes and aphorisms. It needs to be struggled for and earned.

And, of course, there's Simz herself, who's just a stupidly talented artist in every conceivable sense of the word.

However, there's one reason I'll always come back to this album. Mainly, I was completely isolated during quarantine. I spent a year and half completely by myself, and while I'm definitely an introverted person by default, there's a difference between being more comfortable by yourself and being forced to be by yourself because there's a disease tearing through the population. Turns out spending a year and a half alone isn't the best thing for your mental health. (Who'd have thought?!?!) Sometimes I Might Be Introvert came out after I had my shots, and I came out of quarantine a little worse for wear. But once I had it, it reminded me that I needed to find myself again. It didn't solve my problems, but it was comforting, and that was enough. On top of just being a great album with no additional context needed.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert isn't perfect. I like the interludes from an album pacing standpoint and I get why they're there, but the songs themselves do a better job of expressing what's being said in them. I can also understand someone balking at the length and the fact that it kind of ends twice. (Though I'm cool with it because I like both those tracks a lot.) Also, I think I like GREY Area a tiny bit more. But those complaints are minor and I can deal with a flaw or two when something's this aligned with my tastes.

Accepting flaws. Hey, that's the theme of the album!

Favorite Songs (If I had to narrow down to just three): "I Love You, I Hate You," "Protect My Energy," "Fear No Man"

When I first saw the video for Introvert I knew I was in for a ride with this album and it's definitely one of my favorites from last year; I even got the delux-o vinyl with a signed picture of Simz in it! Introvert is an amazing track and it's got an amazing video to go alongside it; highly recommended. I confess to also thinking that some of the length of the album is a little intimidating and it feels a little padded, but Introvert and Woman alone are worth the price of admission. I admit to listening to it more often on streaming than on vinyl because four flips are a bit too much to get through a rap album!

I was pretty bummed when she canceled her NA tour; she said that she would've probably lost money as an independent artist but at least one of the shows in SF she had was sold out, and they added another night, so it couldn't have been going too bad for her?

7 tracks in and I feel this would be an incredible album if Simz wasn't on it.

EDIT: Yep. Her rapping's alright in parts but they takes an age to get out of her boring default cadence.

@rorie: So my roommate does hospitality coordination for a touring company, and I've spent a lot of time learning about his field from talking to him. I'm not in the field myself, so this is strictly conjecture on my part and take this with several heaping handfuls of salt. But I have learned a thing or two!

If I had to summarize the state of touring in one word, at least from an outsider's perspective, that word would be "chaos." Different issues are hounding all rungs of touring, be it your small acts playing small venues or major tours for major artists. Some issues are unique to different levels, but one universal issue, particularly for artists on Simz's level or larger, is that everyone wants/wanted to tour in 2022, what with all the revenue lost during quarantine. Because everyone's touring, there are simply fewer resources to go around, be it equipment or personnel or whatever. (I've heard stories of these dorky tour cold wars happening where one tour will poach someone working on another tour, so they'll be some sort of petty scheduling "Oh look, we just put another show in the town you're playing on the same day" revenge and blah blah blah.) So all aspects of touring, particularly if you're a known artist, have gotten more expensive, and the cost of COVID protocol measures (provided you're an artist that cares about that kind of thing) certainly doesn't help.

All of this is to say that if she did cancel the NA tour because of probable sunk cost, I, unfortunately, believe her. On the other hand, another thing I learned from my roommate is to be skeptical of why artists say their canceling tours. (Almost always, it's because of sales.) But that general rule is for artists who are way more famous than Simz. So sadly, she's probably right.

EDIT: Also, gas prices, vehicle rentals, pay guarantees not covering the cost of the crew. If you don't have the support of a big label, all that adds up. You can make some up with a sold-out show or two and merch, but in her case, probably not enough.

I enjoyed this album. The beats are the show stealers in just about every song. They manage to be alternatingly soaring and calming without being overwhelming. The mix of Afro beats, R&B, and outright orchestral instrumentation grant the album a lot of sonic diversity while still being in a relatively thin tonal band. The beats switch things up constantly, but the raps don't always hang.

The raps themselves were solid, but I couldn't help but wonder what a more dynamic rapper might be able to do with those beats. The uplifting messages and personal stories were compelling; but, as @shindig mentioned earlier, Little Simz's delivery is fairly one-note thoughout many of the songs. Her flow and tone are steady and calming even on songs that are up-tempo, like the opening of "Standing Ovation". I would have loved a few features to break up the tempo. Though I suppose it's hard to have features on an album called "Sometimes I Might Be Introvert." I don't think it's a coincidence that "Woman" and "Point and Kill," the two songs with other vocalists involved, are the most listened to songs on the album according to Spotify.

If you want a very chill rap album that has some lyrical bite, I'd definitely recommend "Sometimes I Might Be Introvert".

Her delivery works for me because, while it's not the most energetic in the world, it strikes me as really in-control and collected, and I also think it makes you pay attention to her writing a little bit more. But I get why it may not work for everyone.

There's also this thing in underground rap right now where there's this wave of rappers who rap in an even more deliberate monotone and frequently rap over very minimal, sparse, even sometimes drumless beats. (See: Ka, Roc Marciano, Navy Blue, MIKE, etc.) I like some more than others, and they do it for different reasons, but the general idea is that it evokes a more icy, emotionally despondent feeling. The main reason I bring this up is that I've been exposed to these rappers, so to me, Simz sounds pretty energetic. But I get it.

I'll keep this short: I like the album. She's different than the mainstream and American rappers that I usually listen to. But it's not an album that I can passively listen to, so I feel like I need more than a week to take it all in order to give the album the respect it deserves.

I don't feel like many albums come along that manage to feel as cohesive and grand in scale as SIMBI. The lyrical content and the array of influences really come together into a great package where on track just naturally flows into the next and there's really not a skip in the bunch to me personally.

I do understand where some of y'all are coming from on the flow. It's not as dynamic as many other rappers out there, but it's still got a solid rhythm and energy to it and I'm just a sucker for UK rappers that embrace their accent.

I saw this album getting good reviews a year ago, and the reason I didn't pick it up then is because I took offense at the album title. A person is either introvert or not, there is no "sometimes" about it. It is a permanent condition, not a mood. It's not a disability but it can sometimes feel like one, but in recent years there has been a lot of introvert-acceptance as managers are learning that just because quiet people don't constantly brag about their work doesn't mean that they're not performing. So mislabeling it hurts. But being introverted isn't all that bad either and you don't always need to act like the whole world is against you, which is a thing that a lot of rappers do - invent their opposition that they can then write songs about if they don't have any organically.

Well, onto the album itself. It is well-produced and consistent and if people care about value for money, you get it here for 65 minutes. I don't know much about the state of rap in 2022, much less about UK rap, so I was surprised about how easily accessible this album is. I especially like the songs where she sounds more confident around the middle of the album, as I said before, her struggles with self-issues didn't really captivate me.

I agree with what's been said in earlier posts. The interludes are unnecessary and the album goes on for too long (I did the math and the interludes constitute over 10 minutes of the album). Asking for variety in the delivery might go against the theme of the album but I don't think it would have hurt.

Nevertheless this is my favorite of the album club so far and I can see a couple of these songs landing on my playlists. But I think more importantly I look forward to her future albums that I think have a lot of potential yet to be unleashed.

This album sounds grand and expensive. The lyrics are thoughtful and while she does rap a bit one-note, her delivery does make it fairly easy to get a lot of out the lyrics on the first go-around. While i'm fairly decent at english, it's still not my native tongue and it can take ages for lyrics to really hit home for me. Not with this one! I'd give it a solid 8,3/11

@apewins: Her previous album, GREY Area, is just as good and literally half the length. Do with that what you will.

I've listened to the first nine songs off of this album and I don't think listening to any more is going to really change my mind.

So I generally like the music going on here. It sounds really good, really clear and warm, and I could listen to a whole album that sounds like this... without the rapping. I've never spent quality time seeking out rap, but whatever I have heard, I've really disliked and this is no different. I find her rapping to be very monotone and constant in a way that I find grating. I'm sure there's a rap song somewhere out there that I'd like, but this isn't it. Any time I heard singing, I would immediately think "please let this part last". Inevitably, it didn't. It was always used as a flair and nothing more, quickly replaced by more of Simz's rapping.