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Welcome to a new edition of the Daily Music Picks newsletter!
Today’s music pick is a glimpse into one of pop and R&B’s most electrifying creative minds.
Genre: Hip-Hop, Electronic
Label: Forever Living Originals
Release Date: February 9, 2024
Vibe: 🤖
The last time the world was blessed with a Drop EP series entry, Little Simz wasn’t quite in the same spot culturally. She was still a year out from releasing Sometimes I Might Be An Introvert, a critical and commercial success that topped many 2021 best-of lists and won her a Mercury Prize in 2022. Drop 6 appeared in the middle of the first COVID outbreak and sounded like it—raw, resentful, and very DIY. On Drop 7, the approach has changed for the better and also stayed the same. The production is even more intent on getting your heart racing, thanks to the blistering Jakwob production, and yet, in a way, Simz is more restrained here. Surely, that has to do with her no longer being an underdog starved of industry recognition. Here, she’s an artist in complete control (and possibly at the peak) of her considerable powers.
“Mood Swings” gets the EP off to a roaring start, balancing simmering hi-hats with explosive, afro-centric bass. At its center, Simz revels in the sharp edges of the strobe light pulses, focused on simply going “where the love is.” Hotter still are the balie-tronic funk of “Fever” and the Jersey club vibes of “Torch,” where glitchy phasors and reverbs burp and swell around rock-solid grooves. These are meant as snapshots, immediate windows into Simz’s creative mindset, rather than fully fleshed-out tracks that have been labored over for days or weeks. Or, at least, that’s the spirit of the Drop series, but I almost forgot this was an EP until the short running time had already flown by. These songs feel less like outtakes and more like teasers for a big, expensive blockbuster to come.
For fans of the British hip-hop sensation like myself, it’ll take all of one’s willpower to wait patiently until that next full-length project drops after this intoxicating bit of foreplay.
👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈