MUSICIANS TO KNOW: NYALLAH
Photography: Nabila Wirakusumah
Creative Direction & Production: Bianca Jean-Pierre & Nabila Wirakusumah
Matching suit by Kala Fortune Reed of Junes Tailoring
Hair by B. Bell
Makeup by NYALLAH
Noir at Nite’s “Black Futures Month” show at Public Records in Brooklyn was filled with healing music and an unspoken understanding that our safety and joy as a community is a shared responsibility. The lineup of genre-bending talent featuring NYALLAH w/ Banswomb, J.Scott & DJ cry$cross aligned perfectly with the theme “Black Futures” celebrating how we reimagine collective liberation through music for the new generation and beyond.
We had the pleasure of chatting with one of the headlining artists, NYALLAH, to learn more about their journey as a musician and community organizer. NYALLAH is known for blending elements of neo-soul, R&B, hip-hop, and West African rhythms while exploring themes of self-expansion, transformation, and love. With their latest project, R+B, recorded in phases spanning a near-death bike accident and an eye-opening trip to Costa Rica, R+B navigates relationships, desirability, and self-awareness from a black queer perspective. Through enchanting vocals and vulnerable lyrics, NYALLAH reminds us that desirability is not love and our liberation lies in de-centering ourselves and prioritizing collective care.
NYALLAH interviewed below by Nabila Wirakusumah (SHEER Creative Director) and Bianca Jean-Pierre (SHEER Founder)
Bianca: We're here in your beautiful home in Brooklyn. How do you like living in Brooklyn coming from the West Coast?
NYALLAH: I've been here for five years. It's like a struggle we normalize. People are taught the culture of New York is that you expect to suffer here and you expect to struggle. I think the struggle that came post-pandemic is very unique where I'm just like, damn, I don't have the bandwidth to take on a bunch of different jobs at once so that I can make ends meet. Everything's getting so expensive. After my accident, I told myself I was going to live here for five years and I'm in my fifth year so this is around the time I should be shifting at some point. Once my accident happened, and now I have this metal in my hip..
Bianca: Wait, what accident? What happened?
NYALLAH: Oh yeah, I got hit by a car.
Nabila: When was this?! And where?
NYALLAH: September 14th, 2022, because the day that I released R+B was a year after. Basically I moved half my stuff into this apartment. I had a studio session to go to which was about twenty minutes walking so I decided to just bike it. At this time I used to bike everywhere. So I'm biking and I'm on a Hancock and Patchen and I wait for all the cars to pass by. The light changed and something in me was like “Bike faster!” I'm trying and trying and then I blacked out. I wake up and I'm on the floor. I can't get up. This guy ran across the street and he's literally making sure the guy that hit me doesn't drive off because it was this young dude who hit me. He basically ran five lights and then hit me and I flew in the air.
Bianca: OMG!
NYALLAH: I'm going in and out of consciousness and then I ended up at the hospital. I found out later after I finally woke up that I was in surgery for nine hours. I ended up giving them my mom’s number who was in LA.
My arm was busted open and I had to get a cast. I couldn't walk for three months and I had to learn how to sit up and how to move around my room. Then I was in a wheelchair and had to get my strength back. The dude that hit me literally paid nothing. The state of New York paid me because I had to get no fault insurance since he didn't have insurance.
Bianca: It really hurts knowing your family couldn’t be there for you during all of this.
NYALLAH: And then on top of that, there were people in my community in Brooklyn who wanted to use this time to air out their grievances with me.
Bianca: Really? This is the time they chose to do that? While you’re recovering…
Nabila: I had way less serious health problems but it was crazy to me how much I felt just like this. The physical pain was happening and at the same time there was a lot of social pain. People were coming out of nowhere like “Oh, I'm mad at you now because you need help.”
NYALLAH: So, you're being ableist? Because that's really all it is.
Nabila: It's fucked up.
NYALLAH: Even just getting comfortable again in my body after everything that happened. I've always been a thick person. But it really wasn't until Megan Thee Stallion came on the scene, that's when people started being less misogynistic and fatphobic to certain types of bodies. Before that it was like, you're too fast if you were wearing certain things. But now if I have my ass out, it's liberating right? It’s cool that things have shifted, but also I literally grew up being told this was not okay for my body type.
Nabila: It just ties so many difficult things together: confronting ableism, confronting being in your body, the fatphobia, pain management, dealing with not being able to advocate for yourself in the moment of an accident and your family being far away.
NYALLAH: I'm still flowing through stuff. I was telling my therapist I used to be the person where if you invited me to something or if you had a show, I would always pull up. I'm gonna support you. I don't even got it like that anymore. I literally will flake on people an hour before. And I'm not gonna use the word flake, because my therapist said, “It's not flaking. It’s honoring your capacity.” My capacity has shifted.
I have so much PTSD after this accident. I have to psychologically prepare myself to go out because like, there was a point where I would have PTSD about just crossing the street. I can't jaywalk anymore. It gives me so much anxiety now.
“I’ve always been a thick person. But it really wasn’t until Megan Thee Stallion came on the scene, that’s when people started being less misogynistic and fatphobic to certain types of bodies. Before that it was like, you’re too fast if you were wearing certain things. But now if I have my ass out, it’s liberating right? It’s cool that things have shifted, but also I literally grew up being told this was not okay for my body type.”
Bianca: I was so wrapped up in your story but I wanted to share I relate to your PTSD so much because this is actually the ten year anniversary that I also got hit by a car. A dollar van actually, which is the most Brooklyn shit ever.
NYALLAH: Omg and you’re so small. That’s the most Brooklyn shit ever but also so fucked up because they drive so fast!
Bianca: I literally had the same intuition that you had, because I saw the van turning so fast and I was like you need to move faster and I threw myself forward and he caught my foot. And then on top of that, dealing with the PTSD that comes with being in an accident. Like your body has a timeline of how long it might take to heal but mentally there's no timeline.
NYALLAH: I'm mostly navigating the emotional recovery of it now. I was recovering in a nursing home around old people so I was around people who are dying. I was hearing people scream out in agony for hours.
I used to love dancing. I can't even dance in the same way and that pisses me off because I can't dance for hours like I used to. Physically, it's still something that I'm navigating but I’m doing more than what I was doing before. I wasn't performing last year at this time and now I'm performing.
Nabila: What was your relationship to creating art and the dynamic of your body recovering? Was making music helpful to you?
NYALLAH: I feel like it was. I was working on R+B for a long time, I just didn't know what it was called yet. I was working on music for like two years.
When I was in rehab, I had a friend who had gone to my apartment and brought my music equipment there. They couldn’t bring the speakers but brought my headphones and my mic. My left arm was in a cast too and it was my dominant hand so I remember I was trying to write and I'm crying because I can't. Eventually there were days where I could write a lot and I'm like, okay, I'm doing good.
I was working on Ableton during the pandemic. I wanted to learn Ableton because all of the people that I knew that produced used it. I started producing more on Ableton and now doing my own vocal arrangements and shit like that. There were at least two songs that I had already before the accident. “CRAZY” was for sure one of them.
I worked on “THE CONCEPT OF RETURNING HOME” a couple of months before. I also had finished “HNAHS” when I came back from Costa Rica. The whole time I was in Costa Rica I was having this reset of setting new boundaries with myself and with life in different ways. Then life was responding and I was getting no’s from certain things and I'm getting yes’s from new things. And that’s when I really worked on “NOVEMBER #9”. I also worked on the background vocals for ”NAS” while I was out there. So I was working on this album throughout 2022.
Bianca: I love “NAS” but I’m in my manifestation era so I feel like if I keep saying that, I’m going to keep attracting that haha.
NYALLAH: And that’s the thing! That’s why I had to get it out.
When I was in rehab, I thought maybe I can make new music here. Because I hurt my diaphragm, things physically shifted and my breathing had changed. I feel like my voice got weaker because I wasn't singing for a while and I had to gain it back. Whenever I didn't want to sing, I spent a lot of time mixing the songs. I finished all the demos, all nine songs, by February of last year.
Bianca: I really like your storytelling in your music and it’s so relatable to me. We've talked about a lot of heavy topics and lots of emotions we can feel in your music but you do it in such a succinct, straight to the point, but also down to earth way. Knowing that you went through something traumatic as you were putting this music together, how do you manage to do that? What’s your process when writing?
NYALLAH: I feel like writing for me is honestly stuff that I would journal. But I want a physical record of it, like I need a receipt. There's certain stuff I'll journal that I don't want people to know and I'd like it to disappear because this is mine. But there are certain things where I'm like, yeah, that happened. We can share this together.
Nabila: What's the difference to you?
NYALLAH: I have different notebooks. I have a journal and I have a music notebook now, which I've been trying to be more intentional with.
With this project R+B, I wanted to show that I’m actually a skilled songwriter. Because I'm a vocalist first, people would tell me I’m great at that, but I want people to know I write too. I think, for me, lyrically, it was very free flowing and a lot of freestyling. I would make a beat or somebody would give me a beat. and then I would sing something and freestyle over it. Then I would listen back to the freestyle and edit it and make it better. I was finding ways to explore how I write as a person and how I could incorporate that within my songwriting because like I said before, like I was like a writer and other ways. I don't really write poetry, but people often tell me that they feel like my writing is poetic, which I find really interesting.
It's funny to me now because as I'm performing, I'm hearing certain things I'm saying, and I'm realizing there are new meanings I didn't notice before.
“With this project R+B, I wanted to show that I’m actually a skilled songwriter. Because I’m a vocalist first, people would tell me I’m great at that, but I want people to know I write too. I think, for me, lyrically, it was very free flowing and a lot of freestyling.”
Bianca: Outside of your approach to writing songs on R+B, how did you decide on the specific topics you wanted to explore in this project?
NYALLAH: On the songs I'm openly using she/her and they/them pronouns with people. I realized I want to make R&B from a queer perspective. It's still black. But it’s also a queer black perspective. I love Ambre and I love Destin Conrad. There are more queer people that are really getting their voices out there.
Something that I also was wanting to get comfortable with was making music that doesn't have to be about sex or love. Like, there are songs obviously about love, but it's more so about desirability, and relationships and boundaries and capacity. It's not just like having sex, which isn't an issue, but I think oftentimes, it seems like it's easier for people to label it as like queer music if it’s intimacy related in that way.
Bianca: In addition to making music you’re also a community organizer. I feel like a lot of times our existence automatically kind of makes us have to question or challenge a lot of the systems that we're in, right, but you actively put yourself out there in that way. So when and how did you start getting into community organizing and activism?
NYALLAH: When I was in college, 2015-2016 with Alton Sterling, and all the black people who were killed by the police. And I think I just got really tired of not having any tangible resources or ways to organize the people. Protesting is very important, yes, but I know that every time one of these things happens, we all jump up, and I'm like, what work is going on before those things happen? That was when I got involved with Black Lives Matter in LA. For almost three months there was an encampment on the steps of City Hall. That's how I got more involved with learning more about grassroots organizing, and figuring out how to connect with people. Then when I would visit New York a lot, I knew a lot of queer people who were in Black Youth Project 100. I worked on a lot of music stuff with them and then that's how I started to get into more organizing.
I just think it’s important as artists to find ways to amplify the voices of other people. So many artists I admire and I look up to are in the community, doing the work, not centering themselves but using their platform to amplify these issues. And I don’t think it’s that hard. You can literally just repost something, it’s not that big of a deal. I understand that some folks are so money, money, money focused but that’s also how I know you’re not really thinking, because you’re still thinking that capitalism is a solution to capitalism.
I’ve seen firsthand the importance of community and advocacy. We just have to do that shit. Because even if you don’t think it’s impacting you, it is, because it’s happening to another human being. Collective liberation is key. Recognizing that is key. It either happened to you already, or it’s going to happen to you. I remember when people used to bitch about LA while they gentrified it, and not acknowledge how homelessness was an issue. Five years later, homelessness is at an all time high, and other black cities are experiencing the exact same thing. And now everyone’s like – wait a minute, we should care about gentrification. But the black capitalists didn’t want to hear that. The bougie POC, the white gays, whatever demographic, nobody was trying to hear that. They were like, “I’m oppressed”. But it’s like me too, so let’s move past the individualism.
“On the songs I’m openly using she/her and they/them pronouns with people. I realized I want to make R&B from a queer perspective. It’s still black. But it’s also a queer black perspective. I love Ambre and I love Destin Conrad. There are more queer people that are really getting their voices out there. ”
Bianca: What does liberation look like to you? On a personal level and a community level?
NYALLAH: Personally, I would love if people respect my pronouns all the time. That’s not everything but it would be nice. Liberation is people collectively being able to exist how they exist, without beef. If there’s issues, we’re able to navigate them in a safe way that’s reciprocal and considerate of everybody’s feelings, and also being solution oriented. I would just love to live in a world where I can go outside and not feel afraid or worried about my safety.
Liberation will look like the ability to exist without these harmful systems in place, and with solutions or alternatives to that. Also, it looks like no genocide. No police brutality. No sexual assault. It looks like having actual support from the entities that say they’re going to support us, like having social services show us actual solutions, actual workshops, real investments and community.
Bianca: What does success look like for you?
NYALLAH: Success is being consistent in my follow through and my results, but also with myself in terms of my emotional and mental capacity. It’s making sure that I’m still able to rest. I would love to get to a point where I am creating by choice. It’s really hard if you don’t have a record deal, doing all the things yourself. You’ve really got to hustle for a while and it’s exhausting. I’ve been performing since ninth grade, releasing music since twelfth grade, – it’s been almost a decade. I’m tired. But even then I think of people who I’m fans of and when I meet them I realize they've been at it for a decade until it finally works out. Success is just a way of being at ease.
“I just think it’s important as artists to find ways to amplify the voices of other people. So many artists I admire and I look up to are in the community, doing the work, not centering themselves but using their platform to amplify these issues.”
Success is also knowing that I made an impact in my community. I would love, whenever I leave my home, to be around community where my contributions are acknowledged and honored. And where I can see the lineage of that shit. I feel like success is my ancestors being like, yes, you did that shit. Thank you for respecting what the fuck we laid down and then doing your own shit.
I think about where I am now, I’m literally dealing with the repercussions of a near death accident where I have outstanding rent, and I should be stressed out of my mind. But I’m also like, if I could manifest getting out of that near death situation in three months, secured this home after subletting and survived through all these things, all while putting out a new EP. Plus I booked a live performance at Public Records, which is such a dope venue. So I already feel successful to the younger version of me. I have to honor that.
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Photography by Dana White
Nada Esmaeel’s work is alive and vibrant, rich in detail and color. In addition to paintings, illustrations and animations, she has also designed 3D gaming environments where woven rugs hang from the walls and colored lanterns are strung across an intimate courtyard. But in each of these varied mediums, the subject is almost always Palestinian people and their culture.