Little Simz

“I was always just an ambitious kid from early. I always knew that I had a purpose and I was destined for something big, great.”

“I'm the youngest of four. I have two older sisters and an older brother and was raised by a single mother. Basically, my household was just full of life. Everything was lit all the time.”

“I never knew listening to a song could give you goose bumps and make you cry until I listened to Lauryn Hill.”

“When I write, I normally write anywhere that I can feel at peace, so if it's in my bedroom, if it's at the park, if it's by a lake somewhere, wherever I feel calm is where I like to write.”

“I don't dress to impress; I've never been that person.”

“When you feel like a musician you listen to is like you, then they don't feel so far away, and whatever you want to get to isn't so far away.”

“I've experienced racism and run-ins with the law, and it's a real thing, and it happens where I grew up. It's something that not a lot of people want to talk about. I feel like I have a duty, and I wouldn't be honest or true to myself if I didn't speak about it.”

“Taking on different characters and seeing things through the eyes of different people is interesting to me. When I look at what people are going through in life, I try to understand their story.”

“I just wanted to kind of break down those gender stereotypes and just say everyone's equal, everyone's their own person, everyone's their own individual.”

“I've always loved the English language. I just like words, you know?”

“Singles are for people that want to chart - I'm measuring my success by how well I connect with people.”

“I change my mind quite a lot about things, which isn't always a good thing.”

“Dance was something I'd just done at my youth club, and I used to teach dance when I was 14 to 19, 20 years old. I had my own dance group, and then I got more into the acting stuff, and I started doing things for TV. And then I put that on pause, because I really wanted to focus on my real passion, which is music.”

“I'm not desperate to sign, like, a record deal. I'm very hungry, but I'm just not desperate for it.”

“I enjoy albums, not a song here and there. The recordings I like have been a soundtrack to a universe.”

“I just write about how I'm feeling at the time. If I feel like being cheeky and a bit straight up and a bit aggressive, you'll hear that in my music. If I feel like being very vulnerable and opening up about something personal, you'll hear that, too.”

“I struggled with working with producers because no one openly wanted to give me a chance to rap on their beats. That's just honest talk. No one really wanted to take that risk.”

“I've worked really, really hard on my lyricism.”

“I don't get fazed by things easily. I don't really care about much; I'm just not interested in a lot. I'm just interested in the well being of my close ones, my music, the message I'm portraying, how my efforts are contributing to society.”

“I get 'female Kendrick' quite a lot. I'm definitely not complaining. At the same time, I want to be the female Simz. I just want to be me.”