Song Exploder - Little Simz - Free

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Little Simz is a rapper from England who put out her first album in 2015. She’s won the Mercury Prize, a Brit Award, and three MOBO awards. She also starred in the Netflix series Top Boy. Her most recent album is called Lotus. It came out in June 2025, and it followed a pretty tumultuous time in her career. For this episode, I got to talk to Little Simz about one of the songs from that album, called "Free," along with Miles Clinton James, who produced the track. Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com.For more, visit songexploder.net/little-simz.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Little Sims is a rapper from England who put out her first album in 2015. She's won the Mercury Prize, a Brit Award, and three mobile awards. She also starred in the Netflix series Top Boy. Her most recent album is called Lotus and came out in June 2025, and it followed a pretty tumultuous time in her career. For this episode, I got to talk to Little Sims about one of the first. songs from that album called Free, along with Miles Clinton James, who produced the track.

My name is Simby. Where does the story of this song start for you? This song kind of happened in two parts. It was the year 2022, like springtime. I was reading this book called Conversations with God, and it talks a lot about love and fear and the duality of those two things. I had this feeling like, why is it fear and not hate? But that book definitely unlocked that for me.

And I was just in a deep state of documenting my thoughts and feelings on paper. So I kind of wanted to write my take. So I wrote the words as like a poem. Would you read the poem? Yeah. I think love is understanding that people can change. loving them anyway through every stage. I read all about love, then I gave it to Jade. I think love is sharing knowledge is so much to gain. I think lovers every time I put pen to the page. If I don't love what I'm

doing and I'm hardly engaged. God, you love me though. I'm flawed. I know I'm not an innocent child, but I am yours. And if you're with me, you are safe. I know my body isn't immortal, but I am brave. I think you know it's real love when a sincere I'm a show of my ain't scared eradicate fear I'm not the best like poetry deliverer I don't think that sounded great no some people that are so aware of like the space

and the cadence and stuff but I think mine just ends up sounding like a rap or like I'm just yeah when you were writing that who do you think you were writing it for me like what are the parts of that that you felt like you most needed to hear.

I think that love is forgiving yourself. Just that line, yeah, really hits me. Because I just think, you know, we make mistakes and carry a lot of, like, shame and a lot of blame sometimes. And it weighs us down. Well, it's definitely weighed me down. And I think I've just had to forgive myself. Do you know what I mean?

I came into this industry, like, very trusting. How old were you? I started performing when I was like 9. But when I started putting out music, I was probably like 14, 15. There's a lot I probably would have done different. But then even when I say that I'm like, would I though? Because I guess it has made me who I am. So I think it's just embracing all that comes with who you are.

And like, same way you can learn to accept people. I think you learn how to accept your shortcomings and just try and be better and just forgive yourself. So you said that the song happened in two parts. what was the second part? I wrote the poem and then got in with Miles who produced the song. So I'm Miles Clinton James and I'm a record producer from North London. How did you and Sims first meet? Oh goodness. I mean, that was a very long time ago.

I was a session musician and the first session was maybe 2014. I can vaguely remember playing some bass in a studio somewhere in East London. and yeah, just remember thinking she was really focused. She had her headphones on and, you know, was writing on a notepad. That's my earliest memory. So it probably didn't speak a huge amount then. How did it go from that situation where you're not speaking to each other and you're there as a session player to becoming the producer of this track?

You know, post that session, I was called in quite a bit to work with Sims and I would be playing, you know, whatever it was needed at the time so it could have been guitar, bass, percussion. and on the previous album I was involved quite heavily on the writing side of things so I was in with the full band and orchestra and coming up with ideas in the moment so yeah that was maybe the session that consolidated our relationship

we definitely spent a lot of time just connecting yeah emotionally absolutely and then June last year we had a proper catch-up over the phone we spoke about kind of where she'd been where she was currently you know she was in quite a a difficult space, I would say. She called me up and I could tell there was an emptiness or hollowness in her voice. The call really took me off guard, to be honest.

I was in another session and I could feel how charged, how tense she was feeling, you know, even just over the phone. I just got out of a situation that kind of just rattled my whole shit, to be honest. someone that I was creatively intertwined with and worked on a lot of music with and I think when you create with people for a long time you almost start to feel

and almost get me to feel like without this set up you can't do what you do and yeah it just really rocked me a lot I can kick myself and beat myself up and like, oh, you idiot, like you should have known and you should have, da-da-da-da-da.

My response to that was like, I'm not confident in myself and I'm not going to come to the studio and make everyone believe that I am. I'm not a pretender and that's not how I feel. And that kind of, yeah, that stopped me in my tracks. But what I can try and do is use it. And I can talk about the fact that I don't feel confident in myself

in a song like free. And what made you want to reach out to Miles specifically? He just wasn't afraid. I knew he was just going to be super down to like try whatever. And that excited me because I didn't know what kind of album we were going to make, but I wanted to feel free and just like a kid that is just, this is just play. There's so many different kinds of producers out there who work in so many different ways. I was wondering, for you, what do you want from a producer?

I think the role of the producer is to essentially understand what the artist wants to say and allows them the room to be able to express that and then compose this soundtrack to that story. Most of the other tracks in the album were created from scratch together with Sims, where three is an exception to that. Three came out of an evening hangout with my closest friend who's also a co-writer in the song guy called Alex Bonfanti. He and myself, we've been friends for the longest time, but as he's toured more and I've got children,

we don't find much time to connect so I'd hold these evening kind of catch-ups with no real pressure on what would come out of it, just really for us to catch up. I jumped on drums, and Al is an incredible bass player. He's the guy who's actually playing bass on. the song. First of all, there's something that you can only hear when you have the stems isolated,

which is this little moment. I think that might actually be our saying, you know, he was lucky, and he was pretty happy with the goofar I was playing. I love stuff like that. There's so much hidden stuff in stems that no one would ever know about. But leave it in, it's part of the vibe. Where were you recording this? So I'm based at the studio in North London, which is already already been around since the 70s. It belongs to a band called The Kinks. Oh, wow. And I have a room right at the top of the building. So I've, over the years, collected a number of tape machines. And three, in fact, was one of those songs that was recorded directly to two-inch tape in one pass, which, you know, in this day and age, is quite special. I'd say not

many people try and record directly to tape, you know, with no ability to erase or edit, or at least a, you know, limited ability to do it. The bass line on this is, I mean, it's like the opposite of a loop. Even as the chord progression cycles back around, the bass part's always doing something different. You know, we actually jammed the song from beginning to end. So there was all this great movement that was happening naturally and he's playing. And, you know, sometimes, unfortunately, people can go in and tidy stuff up and, yeah, simplify a lot of stuff. But in this case, I just felt like actually this is what it was supposed to be.

You know, this interaction is human and shouldn't be tidied up too much. So there's all this natural variation, you're right. These little things are just, I think, what makes it special. But yeah, Alex is wicked man, he's great. We started off with the drum and bass groove, you know, and then I eventually came back in and said, hold on, it'd be nice to put some nylon guitar and some percussion down on top. That's my humble $70 nylon guitar from back in the day.

It feels really dry and basic, but definitely I love having it around. And that's myself on Kongers and my friend Alex playing tambourine. And what we would do when we have these jams is we'd lay the drums bass and guitar down and because my room's full of African drums and weird bits of percussion. So we'd do one pass just for fun of percussion together

to give it some life. So there you're hearing myself and Alex with a microphone, you know, six feet in front of us and we are singing, but not at that original pitch. In fact, what we're doing is we're singing at a lower pitch, and I've sped that up. No kidding. Yeah, so the original vocals were done by myself for now at a lower pitch.

So we'd recorded the original instrumental, and we wanted to get into that space of early kind of Jackson 5, kind of early 70s soul, and a lot of those singers had almost squeaky, high-pitched vocals. So one creative way to do that was actually to slow the tape down. and sing at a lower pitch. So that's what your voices actually sound like. There you go, exactly, yeah. So we're using some pretty old-school period-correct stuff.

Just tape machine technology. Absolutely. We didn't have any computers involved at this early stage. Part of the catch-up is just recording to tape no screens and just playing, you know. And then when you go and play the combined vocals and rhythm section back together, your voices actually formatted up so you sound higher. Where did those words come from? I know me and Alex for quite a while have been going to a lot of marches in central London.

We were feeling injustice in the world was kind of weighing heavy on our hearts and, you know, more love was more needed. So that was something that just felt right. It matched our energy. Even after we finished the song, we didn't really know what, you know, would come of it. My conversation with Little Sims and Miles James continues after this. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kaysh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career.

And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have to have. these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Weinrobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website.

Rishi-kash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. How did you first hear the track that Miles and Alex made? I think Miles just played it. And I was like, yo, what is that? And then I just had it on loop. I was just listening to it, listening to it. Yeah. And I don't know. I just felt really emotional. But I also felt really. really uplifted. It felt positive and bright and I needed that. And so I just got in to just keep playing it and then I land on the poem. I think that love is forgiving yourself. I think that love is offering your immediate help. I think that love is everything that we need in this world. I think the key is being honest and being yourself. I think love is understanding that people can change and loving them anyway through every stage. I read all about love.

I gave it to Jade. Love is sharing knowledge, there's so much to gain. How long had it been at that point since you'd written the poem originally? Two years. So what made you want to reach back to that poem for this song in that moment? I think it was just the hook, wishing that the love will set us free. It just felt super fitting to talk about love what that meant to me and then talk about fear. I think that fear is not trusting yourself.

I think that fear is keeping true information withheld. think fear can be exposed in abundance of wealth and then creeps in when you're not loving yourself. Fear can be dressed in a form of protection. Fear can be the culprit of slowing progression. Can you tell me what you were thinking about in terms of your flow and delivery in the verses? I just wanted it to feel conversational. Like I could just say this to you. And also, I think I love that style of like rap where it's in the pocket and the music is just supporting what I'm saying. Love is something that you can't measure. No judgment, no pressure. It's your letter, your words for whomever. Said that we will never ever crash hold under pressure. Love guitar. Use it to do better.

Why did you want it to feel conversational? Because I think this is a conversation. Like, let's talk about it. Like if we were going around in a circle and everyone had to say what they thought love and fear was about this is what I would say and I can pass the mic and let's have a discussion do you know?

Like I don't know anything and that's why I say I think in the lyrics I think that love is forgiving yourself it might not be like I don't know from what I think and what I feel, that's what I think it is.

And it's like once upon a time, I probably thought love was pain. If you don't feel pain, then that's not love, then is it? Yeah. And so I think, yeah, it changes, and I'm just getting more understanding of what I think it means to me.

I just wanted to feel like this is a wider conversation. I think we fear all the answers, so we'd ask the questions, I think that shit is a lethal weapon I think we fear being naked from the fear of rejection if beauty is in the eye of the beholder then why are we obsessed with seeking perfection? And then we get to the end part.

Yeah, after those first two verses, the song kind of shifts. It was an accident that last verse. I'd had a section looping. I was probably working on editing for something in Pro Tools and I had this loop going. It was just looping. Three, two, three, four, three, two, three, four.

Yes, Sims just, you know, when she heard that, you know, she just got writing immediately. Can't hold me down because I've always been, why they always want to hate when the love is. Hear me now, might check, it was one, two, one, more, I won enough, so I had to get. I was just like, just keep looping it, and I'll just keep going. MJ said he got the tunes, I should pull apart.

Every time I bust a lyric, I've been fill a show. That was a cool moment. Because it was so accidental, you couldn't write it, yeah. I love how in this section you changed the word of the sample, like from free to three, depending on the context of what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. Do you have a favorite line from that outro? I like Auntie Simby, what she called me, when my niece turned three.

That's my favorite, too. Really? Because I have a niece, and that's so sweet. It's like a little emotional dagger you just like snuck in. Auntie Simby, what she called me when my niece turned. Used to bump the train to college I would travel for. Never miss a countdown. It was five, four.

Two, one, take off in the air arm. Can you tell me about the strings that are also in this track? How did you end up deciding to add those? I struggled with a feeling that the chorus, you know, the main wishing that love will set us free section, didn't feel, for one, of a better term, chorusy enough. And I always had in my back of my mind, some of the initial references,

the Jackson Five stuff, had audacious string lines. So we teamed up with an amazing string arranger, Rosie Danvers. She came around to the studio one day, and I sang some ideas, loose ideas, and she went away for 10 days or so and kind of arranged some of the ideas that I sang, you know, and then we were fortunate enough

to get one string day across the whole, record, you know, which includes maybe six or seven songs with strings on. So we're in a studio called Rack in London. We have a power cut in the middle of the day, the whole studio blackout. Nothing's working. So I'm like, oh my, we literally have this one day. You can imagine how expensive a day with full string section, you know, in a great studio and London costs for the power to go down.

So it became quite stressful very quickly. We had candles lit and we had to rewire pretty much the whole studio to bring an external power on these, you know, it was really quite a stressful day. The players rehearsed it in the dark. It was like we're flying through the songs or whatever. So we get to free and it might have been like the second to last song we had to do strings on. But because it wasn't a priority and we're running at a time, we're like, can we just do the stuff that we need to get strings for? But Rose was just like, let's just do this, and take 20 minutes, bang, bang, bang. And as soon as the first, like, no, comes in with the strings, I never forget me and mine just looked at each other, like, yo.

Everything about the song made even more sense. It just felt so classic, and it just worked. It was perfect. And it did just add, you know, when I was saying, I was looking for something to give that chorus, that feeling of it landing. and feeling special. The strings really do that.

If you told someone that Free is a song about love, their first assumption might be that it's a song about, like, a romantic relationship. Yeah. Which is not. Yeah, not. It's far from. I've definitely deep to, like, there's more to this thing than people are telling me.

And from my own experience, have just come to my own thoughts and feelings about it. And it might change, you know what I mean? I think maybe in 10 years I might say actually love isn't, it's more about forgiving people, just in general, not so much about self, self, self. That might be an idea, you know, of what I think love is. So it's just like at the time what I was feeling like

I needed to hear as reminders to myself, you know, on what I've learned over the years. But that's what I was saying earlier. Like, I don't really know anything. So I think I'm down to chat. And now here's Free by Little Sims in its entirety. Love is everything that we need in this world. I think the key is being honest and being yourself.

I think love is understanding that people can change. And loving them anyway through every stage. I read all about love and I gave it to Jade. Love is sharing knowledge. There's so much to gain. Love is every time I put pen to the page. I love what I'm doing and I'm hardly engaged, yeah. Oh God, you love me though, I am flawed.

I know I'm not an innocent child, but I am yours. And if you're with me, you are safe. I know my body isn't immortal, but I am brave. I think you know what's real love when it's sincere. I'm a show I'm I ain't scared, eradicate fear, yeah. I think that fear is keeping true information withheld. I think fear can be exposed in abundance of wealth, and it creeps in when you're not loving yourself.

Fear can be dressed in a form of protection. Fear can be the culprit of stowing progression. Can be impulsive and being obsession. I think we fear all the answers, so we'd ask the questions, yeah. I think that shit is a lethal weapon. I think we fear being naked from the fear of rejection. If beauty is in the eye of the behold, then why are we obsessed with seeking perfection? Fear will probably hear this and feel exposed.

Fear works best when love isn't close. But love will never judge you because of your pain. Look in the mirror and say I'll love you unconditionally every day. at SongExploder.net, where you'll find links to buy or stream free. This episode was produced by me, Mary Dolan, Craig Ely, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscop. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm.

If you'd like to hear more from me, you can sign up for my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. And if you want to support the show another way, you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.