Numbers first
On Spotify, his duet with Damso entitled Quickdraw surpasses 55 million plays, while on YouTube, the clip of his hit Djadja has accumulated 900 million views. As we say in France, her adopted country, Aya Nakamura is a megastar. In fact, she is the most listened to Francophone female pop singer in the Francophonie on the various online listening platforms. The Malian-born artist has four albums to his credit, including DNK, released on January 27th. On that day, the Osheaga festival proudly announced its coming to Montreal, and this will be its very first show in North America. It also took only a few minutes for all the tickets for his two shows in the largest Parisian amphitheater, the Accor Arena (formerly Bercy), to be sold, so that a third date was announced. Not bad for a 27-year-old artist, mother of two young children.
Its origins and beginnings
The eldest of a musical family of griots, Aya Danioko – her real name – was born in Bamako, Mali, in 1995. She grew up with her four brothers and sisters in the Parisian suburbs, in Seine-Saint-Denis. She thought about studying fashion, but it was her singing that she showcased in videos posted on social networks. I am in pain is his first song that got over a million views on YouTube. I was love love love of you, coos Aya Nakamura on R&B tunes. Then, the singer, whose artist name is inspired by a character from the TV series heroes, made several prominent collaborations with rappers and producers (Fababy, Gradur, Abou Debeing), then in 2016 she obtained a prestigious contract with major Warner, from whom she hid until her seventh month of pregnancy the came from a girl! “Otherwise, they would never have signed me,” she told Vanity Fair France. His first album, Personal diary, was therefore released in August 2017 before being certified gold, then platinum. Here is the song Oumou Sangaretribute to the great Malian singer of the same name.
His musical style
With a mix of zouk and R&B, Aya Nakamura’s music – which she describes as “solar” – has a sultry nonchalance and an Afro-Caribbean nightclub groove. His texts full of slang and street language have “become a symbol of racial and social cohesion”, according to the magazine. Madame Figaro. “Certain words from the suburbs are now in the dictionary. Rap has brought a lot to everything urban in general. It is the genre most listened to, everywhere, whether one comes from the housing estates, from a bourgeois background or from the countryside, ”explained the main interested party to Vogue UK in 2021. If her outspokenness and her raw lyrics have made some of the most purist critics react, Aya Nakamura breaks the codes of French pop and destabilizes the cultural elites. She was talked about in the French press with misogynistic and racist remarks, especially after she did not appear as planned on the popular show Daily by Yann Barthes. However, the tide is turning… “The French mainstream media now understand that they need Aya Nakamura, but she does not need them”, recently exposed in the magazine miss media sociologist Marie-France Malonga.
In his way
It is said of Aya Nakamura that she does not like to give interviews. One thing is certain, its success emanated from social networks and the public rather than from the “machine” of the music industry. A few days ago, the magazine of the French newspaper The world told an anecdote that could not better illustrate the free spirit of the one who likes to call herself the Nakamurance. Last summer, she received an invitation from Alicia Keys to go on stage with her at the Accor Arena. Alicia Keys took care to learn the words of Djadja, but Aya Nakamura could not attend the rehearsals and she even arrived at the very last minute for the performance. The French star would also have refused to do a duet with Angèle, but she launched an invitation to Rihanna (declined because she was pregnant, but it might have been postponed).
In short, Aya Nakamura steers her boat – in her promo as in the studio – as she sees fit. She even manages her career without an impresario. It is she who chooses her collaborators (the rapper Stormzy or the composer Ever Mihigo) and decides on the terms of his collaborations with the luxury brand Balenciaga, for example. Aya Nakamura separated last year from music video director Vladimir Boudnikoff, the father of her second daughter. Their breakup inspired her new album DNK, on which we find hot songs (Bellek), a collaboration with Myke Towers (You are scared), tunes for To stick on. Even when Aya Nakamura says she’s been betrayed, she adopts the relaxed and sensually relaxed tone that makes her mark.
Aya Nakamura will perform for the North American premiere at Osheaga on August 4.