The lights had barely gone down on the main stage at Grant Park, and Little Simz — still wearing her festival pass — was already headed into the Hacienda PATRÓN tent. This time, though, she wasn't holding a mic, but a pair of headphones. In under two hours, she delivered two completely different sets on the same day at Lollapalooza: a proper main stage performance Thursday afternoon, followed by a surprise DJ set announced just hours earlier.
This marks her ninth festival in the past four months. It started with back-to-back weekends at Coachella, where a surprise B2B DJ set with JT saw her previewing several then-unreleased tracks off "Sugar Girl." From there, she headlined Cross The Tracks back home in London, then flew out to Paris for We Love Green. The real highlight came at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, where she landed the coveted 9pm slot — the most sought-after timeslot of the European summer festival season. She wrapped up June at Roskilde in Denmark, moved on to Down the Rabbit Hole in the Netherlands in July, and now finds herself in Chicago for Lollapalooza. Within 48 hours of this show, she'll be flying to Rhode Island for a Friday set at Newport Jazz Festival, then rushing straight to Montreal for Osheaga the next day.
With a schedule this packed, what she brought up in interviews were the least "tour-glamorous" details. Asked about her one must-do ritual before every show, she said it's using the bathroom — "Sometimes I don't even need to go, it's just nerves, but the moment I'm about to go on, I suddenly feel like 'I need the bathroom.'" Beyond that, her pre-show routine stays simple: put on some music, let the space go quiet, then walk out.
Even her outfit that day wasn't a planned stage look — it was a random pick from Muji. "I don't usually go into a store like that looking for clothes, but that day I just thought, this looks decent, and bought it." Her standard is straightforward: it has to feel comfortable, and it has to feel like her.
Asked about the most memorable stop on this run, she named Primavera Sound, specifically the venue's location right by the sea. As for the Lollapalooza lineup, she said she'd genuinely wanted to catch sets from Blood Orange and Empire of the Sun, "but I'm sandwiched right between them, so I probably won't get the chance." She laughed, adding that just riding around the grounds in a golf cart, she could already feel that the crowd was there to genuinely have a good time.
On the Hacienda PATRÓN DJ set awaiting her that night, she praised the venue design in particular — "the whole space feels like it was really thought through, considering the DJ, the dancers, the bartenders, and even the festivalgoers passing by outside." She said she was hoping for a good sunset, to turn the whole night into a proper party.
