It's no mean feat to match the scale and ambition of Introvert, the first track from Little Simz's forthcoming second album. But Salomon Ligthelm has done it with this extraordinarily powerful video - imaginative, inspirational and, above all, just as epic as the song.

Introvert is visceral essay about black people's lives, fuelled by fear, exhaustion, frustration and political awakening. Ligthelm's brilliant work captures the essence of the powerful emotion driving Simz's track with a stunning collage of choreography, performance, archival news footage, classical painting, home movies, and a brilliant sense of Simz's home city.

The video was shot across a range of London locations, including some very grand ones - the Natural History Museum and Wallace Collection, as well as Peckham and Crystal Palace sports complex. Ligthelm uses a chopped-up, collaged structure to reflect the landscape it maps, with a succession of stunning images and sequences, shot on a mix of formats - but predominantly Super 16mm and 4-perf 35mm film.

Ligthelm first worked with Simz on the Top Boy promo for season 3, and at the end of 2020 they talked about collaborating on a video together for her new music. The result, Ligthelm's first work since joining Prettybird in London, is an absolute classic of the form, where every department has excelled.

Wonderfully shot by Joel Honeywell, brilliantly edited by Elise Butt, the riveting combination of photography, choreography and editorial, as well as direction and performance, echoes the work of director Mark Romanek, and Beyoncé, no less. It's that good.    

SALOMON LIGTHELM:

The film is about finding people moving from a state of chaos... into a space of community, connection and freedom.

“SIMZ reached out saying she's working on new music and would love to collaborate on a video together. [When I listened to Introvert] I was BLOWN away. I was sitting there, in my quiet little bubble taking it all in - the lyrics, the sound, the scale. I connected with SIMZ and her creative director Jeremy Cole and I remember telling them in broad-strokes about some visual/thematic ideas I had. That was the start of a very fluid and super collaborative process with SIMZ and Jeremy.

“The track is really epic and crosses a lot of thematic territory. It became fairly obvious to me at the outset that it wasn't going to be easy to find imagery that matches the scale of the music and lyrics - especially not without becoming didactic. A lot of the archival, and use of art history elements were considerations drawn up right at the outset. 

"It's hard to know who you are, or to accept who you are when you are made to feel like an outcast, an enemy. The film is about finding people moving from a state of chaos and societal disconnection into a space of community, connection and freedom - embracing a true understanding of who they are.”