Music. Aya Nakamura, a singer beyond the clichés

by time news

With its sweet melody and rhythm made for dancing together, the song Djadja, by Aya Nakamura, could pass for a love song with an English-speaking audience. While the clip has nearly 300 million views on YouTube, this African pop song made Nakamura the queen of the French urban music scene in 2018. But if the 23-year-old young woman plays on the alternation between singing and rap soft, in this title she settles accounts with a guy who pretends they slept together. “You think about me, I think about making money” and she does not hesitate to swing at him: “I’m not your daronne, I won’t lecture you.”

Perceived as a hymn to strong women, the title continued on its own and was taken up during recent demonstrations in France against violence against women. However, the singer has a rather divided opinion on the question: “It’s cool to represent black women in France, she says. But I have my own personality, my own way of doing things. When people say: ‘You are the only representative of black women’, there’s a problem. There are others.”

A black artist who does not allow herself to be locked in a box

Lately, there has been quite a buzz around certain French artists who have managed to make themselves known in foreign markets, such as PNL, The Blaze and Christine and the Queens, but Aya represents something else. This determined suburbanite explains in her songs that she wants to make money and not let guys do it, a bit like Rihanna or Cardi B. And, unlike the French women who preceded her internationally, she is not white, Arab or mixed race; she’s a black woman, and this in an industry known to favor lighter-skinned artists

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The Guardian (London)

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