SOMETIMES I MIGHT BE INTROVERT

"Milky Clear" 2LP, gatefold sleeve with gold foil title

Over the course of her lush, expansive, defiantly sprawling new album, Simz delivers an undeniable modern classic, effortlessly condensing any number of disparate styles and genres into music which thrillingly broaches the gap between urgent modern treatise and hip hop. A bold, quantum leap forward from GREY Area, this is hardly music aiming simply for the pop charts; rather, it is turbo charged with the kind of fury and potency, confusion and anxiety that make up the modern experience of being a black woman at this particular point in time. This is no mere philosophical exercise, however - the result is her most ambitious and soaring body of work to date, one which operates at the very heights of what rap can be.

Of the many voices in music today, Simz' is among the most commanding, writing at a pitch of intensity and urgency that few can match. However, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is no diatribe. Instead, it is an intensely alive hybrid, a work of radical honesty that uses personal history as a means of magnifying and challenging the paradoxes we find ourselves in, both social and personal, macro and micro. Like some of the legendary musicians that came before her, Simz is looking at the chaos and disorder in the world right now with resourceful, refined eyes, and she sees the glorious opportunity and enormous responsibility that affords.