When Little Simz’s 2021 album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert was released to widespread acclaim and later awarded the Mercury Prize, there was a sense that the music artist (real name Simbiatu Abisola Abiola Ajikawo) was finally getting her flowers. It seems fitting that three years later – another acclaimed album, the surprise drop No Thank You, sandwiched in between – her new album Lotus features a still life of a flower on the front cover.

The album art was developed by Simz and Yout, the Brixton-based creative studio run by Jeremy Ngatho Cole and Marco Grey, who have previously collaborated with the likes of Ezra Collective and Jeshi. Lotus is Simz’s first album that doesn’t feature a portrait of her on the cover, largely because they didn’t want to distract from her musical storytelling. “I think we agreed quite early on that this was the time to have a body of work where the music can do the talking on its own,” explains Ngatho Cole.

This was a conscious choice: hidden amongst the grit and angst, Simz is displaying a lot of vulnerability on the record, which reflects on themes of betrayal. (A quick search will bring up theories about who the subject is.) “It was a response to a lot of stuff that she’d gone through the year before,” explains Ngatho Cole, who felt a responsibility to do justice to the “very recent, raw experience” she was expressing. “I think it was a lot for me to react to, because obviously, she’s not just a collaborator, she’s a friend. And to hear someone who’s gone through stuff, it’s really difficult, but also it gave more purpose to everything that we wanted to do.”