Sugar Girl

Review of Sugar Girl by Little Simz

Little Simz is one of those artists I’d put up there as one of the most impressive of the 2020s. And look, I love it when artists step out of their comfort zone, I really do. But this EP? This just doesn’t feel like the level we’ve come to expect from her.

What this sounds like to me is Little Simz trying to enter the club scene, maybe to pull in an extra audience, or maybe she’s just playing around in between her actual art projects. Either way, I don’t think this is a style she should make a regular or recurring theme on bigger album projects.

The EP pulls from pretty much every hype trend of the past decade: big booming trap beats, production that sounds like a watered-down Metro Boomin, and sadly, almost none of the fast, razor-sharp UK bars Simz is known for.

“That’s a No No” opens the EP with something that could’ve slipped off a Kanye B-side. The first half rides a stripped-back trap beat, distorted to hell, layered with high-pitched ad-libs and what I’m guessing is a heavily mangled guitar or synth buried in the mix. It’s all very mediocre, until the beat switches and finally clears the room for Simz to do the only proper rapping in her own style on the entire EP. Honestly, it’s by far the best moment across these thirteen minutes.

“Game On” featuring JT is built for the club, and on that front it does the job. But it’s repetitive and unoriginal, the lyrics paint-by-numbers from the bad bitch template. JT does do a fine job though, very confident in her vocals and how she carries the role.

I thought “Game On” was the most repetitive track on Sugar Girl, but “Open Arms” proved me wrong straight away. The drums never shift, the vocals sound low energy, and the synth at the end feels completely out of place. It doesn’t fit the atmosphere at all, honestly it reminds me more of an old mobile platform game that got left running during the recording.

“Telephone” with 070 Shake is another forgettable cut, with pitched-up autotuned vocals running through the whole track that start grating fast. The guitar riff brings nothing exciting to the table and could’ve done with a bit more spice.

Honestly, the more I listened to this EP the more disappointed I got. It feels weak, it feels lazy, it feels like Little Simz reaching for a bigger hype audience and not much else. And again, I respect the experimenting, an artist should always feel free to break out of their sound, but this EP brings nothing new or interesting to trap or the wider hip hop world. The only part of the whole EP that actually shows the beauty and talent of Little Simz is the second half of “That’s a No No,” and even that feels like a glimpse rather than a full moment. It genuinely hurts to give an artist like Simz a low score, she’s an icon and a hero in my eyes, but I’m not going to lie and pretend I enjoyed this.

Featured Tracks

Game On

Open Arms

Telephone