For Little Simz there is an album that deserves a 10 on the report card
In the format “Perfect Ten” by Pitchfork, each artist is invited to tell works that he considers perfect. Not simply beautiful, but really perfect: works that resist the time, which always reveal something new. When it was touched by Little Simzone of the most refined voices on the British music scene, her musical choice fell on a disc that represents a complete sound experience for her: “Choose Your Weapon” by Hiatus Kaiyote. “Every time I listen to it, I discover something new,” says Simz in the video. A simple phrase, but which contains a profound truth: some works do not end with the first listening, but They reveal slowly, layer after layer.
And for this reason, he explains, “Choose your weapon” is a “Perfect Ten”. It is a disc that does not age, it is not consumed, but is renewed every time with new nuances, new meanings, new emotions. It is living music. Hiatus Kaiyote is an Australian band led by magnetic Nai PalmOver time it has become an absolute reference for those looking for courageous sounds and out of the box. The formation was mentioned or championship in Brandi di Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z and many others. Their music escapes the categories: it is soul, but also jazz, funk, electronics, psychedelia. It is sweet and rough, technical and instinctive. “Choose your weapon”, their second album released in 2015, is an ambitious and deeply human sound journey. Each song is built with a maniacal cure for detail, but leaves room for improvisation and unplugged, as if each piece was a small expanding universe. Among all, Simz chooses “molasses” as a symbol of this freedom. A dense, slow, hypnotic song, where groove and melody intertwine in an almost liquid way. The rhythm is unstable, but fascinating, the voice of Nai Palm is sensual, sometimes fragile, in other powerful.
It is a piece that escapes predictability: For Simz, “Choose Your Weapon” is perfect not because it “works”, but because it is authentic, free, full of life. This admiration has a particular weight because it comes from an artist who has made complexity, authenticity and creative freedom of his own music. Disks like “Sometimes I Might BE INTEGRORT” or the last “Lotus” (here our review) have shown how much Simz is able to go against the current, always choosing honesty to the commercial shortcutbut also to be pop, in the highest sense of “popular”. It is black music, full of rap and jazz, accessible and simultaneously full of content. That’s why his choice is not accidental: the universe of Hiatus Kaiyote is very close to his. “In an era of quick playlists and algorithms that devour news, ‘Choose your weapon’ resists as a work to listen slowly, carefully, several times“, The artist concludes.
