This is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated records of this beginning of the year. Aya Nakamura reinvests the shelves of record stores this Friday with DK, their fourth album. Fifteen new songs that have every chance of confirming the phenomenal success of the 27-year-old singer.
“I don’t realize all this exposure and notoriety,” he nevertheless assures the BFMTV microphone. “I’m trying to live my life and enjoy this fame in any way that I can.”
“I think I have the same customs as all women, it’s that I’m known,” sums up the interpreter of djadjathe tube that made her a star in 2018. A status with which, perhaps, she does not always feel comfortable: “Being put on a pedestal puts a lot of distance and dehumanizes.”
It is with the same tweezers that she accepts the nickname “Queen” (queen, in English), which her fans usually attribute to her: “I see it as a synonym for Leader. They see me more as a leader than a follower, a girl who has her head on her shoulders and knows what she wants. There is also the side that is a little sure of me. A bit too safe I think. I’ve been blamed for that before.”
unprecedented success
However, Aya Nakamura did not steal her place on the podium. After djadjaincluded in the Instagram stories of Madonna, Rihanna or Sam Smith, their second album nakamura it is also paved with tubes, girlfriends a pookie going by Dowry. The success took on a new dimension in the summer of 2020, when their third album Oh It earned him to become the most listened to French-speaking artist worldwide on Spotify. Unheard of on the French scene for an artist who mixes pop, hip-hop, Afro and Caribbean sounds.
It is an understatement to say that DK – the consonants of Dianoko, her real last name – the stakes are high. Especially since the secret will have been kept until the end: apart from the single Baby, no excerpt from the record was revealed prior to its release. How do you start making new songs, after having been so successful?
“(For ‘DNK’), I was waiting for the moment where I was going to do things without thinking. (The) moment when you walk into the studio and you don’t ask yourself any more questions, you just love it.”
“At work, I find naivety positive,” he continues. “I think that’s the most important thing. When you don’t have it, it’s not good. That is what allows you to do things without calculating.”
“People feel it, when it’s real”
It is perhaps that spontaneity that has earned Aya Nakamura to unite an audience as numerous as loyal: “If there is no naivety, there is no real feeling. And I think people feel it, when it is false (false, editor’s note) and when it is true. Those who listen to me feel it.”
If that’s the case, DK won’t let you down. Aya Nakamura’s fourth album is a “sensitive, 360 version” record, in her words: “In all the emotions I reveal, it’s a sensitivity, one way or another. Whether it’s sex appeal, sadness, melancholy, joy, breakup, love, these are just sensitive sides of my personality.”
If this introspection is allowed, it does not deny its supposed sexy imprint, already explored in titles such as came up Where prefer. “I see myself as a woman who knows her strengths. Not as an object woman, but as a woman who loves herself and sometimes plays with the male sex.
Are men so easy to manipulate? “I didn’t say that,” she laughs. “Women are equal. We are naive, manipulable, but men are also very weak before meat.
He will defend this new album in May with three consecutive dates at the Accor Arena, which sold out in a few days. It is rumored that, at the same time, Beyoncé will perform at the Stade de France. If confirmed, Aya Nakamura will rush to listen to the American diva as soon as she finishes her own concert: “I won’t be able to enjoy the concert as much as the others. It doesn’t matter!”
Source: BFM TV
