Chunes!

Here’s the beginning of the roll-out of interviews with the new wave of female creatives. Over the weekend, we got an opportunity to chat with Naya Akanji, a singer and songwriter who was featured on the WETALKSOUND LOFN 4 Album Collection about her creative process and music. Enjoy!

Q: Good evening Miss Naya, my name is Axara. Are you ready for the interview?

Naya: Hey Axara, you have a really nice name oh and yes I’m ready.

Q: OK, thank you very much, I’m blushing. Anyways, please tell us more about yourself.

Naya: Omo i never know how to answer this kind of questions but uhm yes…my name is Naya Akanji, apart from music and school, there’s not really much (chuckles). I like to watch anime; a ton of anime, I read romance novels; a shit ton of them like…just fly through. What else… I like murder mysteries; both books and those shows where they’re dissecting the mind of murderers or showing you how people committed crimes. Those true crime shows are awesome and I really really like them. Yeah that’s it about me for now.

Q: Well that’s a whole lot and you sound like a very very interesting person. So how did music start for you?

Naya: I started music in the choir….i mean my house is a very music loving household. Parents played a lot of oldies you know, 80s, early 90s and so I grew up on that. When I wanted to express myself with music, I joined the choir so that I could actually learn. That was the only way to express yourself musically as a child, there were no other music association that you could join if you wanted to do music when I was growing up, I had to join the choir so I did. After a while, a few years back, I decided to start doing music professionally so like 2017…i put out a couple of songs just for fun but I started properly in 2019.

Q: So far, how has it been going?

Naya: I put out a song called “No Words” produced by TEJIRI of ODDIO. I saw that people liked the song, then decided to do more so I started working with LEMAR ABDUL and throughout 2019, we were just creating and creating until 2020, we put out “Vivid Emotions” and it got a lot of love and I’m really grateful for it and so the successes of my previous works has spurred me on to do more so all the music, the features that are going to be coming out this year are all because of the love that people have shown me.

Q: Growing up in a “music loving household ” must have made your journey way better than most of the creatives out there. That might be one of the reasons why your music don’t sound forced. So what’s your creative process like? Do you play any instruments?

Naya: I don’t play instruments but I do understand the basics and fundamentals because of my choir experience. Sometimes, I can tell when you need to change this or that. I do need to learn though; it would help all of this immensely. My process is really about how I’m feeling at that point in time that’s when I’m the one creating, cause sometimes I’m the one who has the vibe or inspiration and I put something down like a little sketch of what I want and send to people but most of the stuffs I have now has been them sending me beats or pieces of music and then when I listen to it, whatever emotions it evokes in me. Music is very powerful; when you hear a piece of music, you remember or feel something so whatever comes to my head at that point in time is what I write about, where I create everything from and where I go. Yeah that’s it basically!

Q: Talking about evoking emotions, what evoked the emotions behind your EP “Vivid Emotions” with Lemar Abdul? I’m a fan of that body of work and I believe everyone should listen to it.

Naya: Thank you very much Axara. I’m flattered you like it. The sounds of Vivid Emotions are really special to me. Some of them were just created because I heard the beats on his laptop; some others we sat down and we crafted stuffs together but overall, I don’t know what it is about that project honestly cause when I would hear certain beats, I’ll be like… nah this one is not for me and I’ll hear those ones and be like hmm, this one is speaking something to me and I would just start writing yunno just play around with words, feed the emotions I was feeling at that point in time and have a song that would come out of it. ‘Company’ for instance, Lemar had made the beat, he already had the hook and was singing “oh baby come to me, let me give you company” to himself so I heard it and I was like wow that’s mad oh, lets actually use that. At that point, I had a picture on IG with “I’m reaching out to you, say you won’t let me go” as the caption (the picture isn’t there anymore sha) so I used that as the rest of it and was like we can make a song out of this and we did and it was pretty. “Eyes on You” was the hardest for me to write because I needed it to hit and I didn’t just want to write at the session and just leave like that so we stayed there. We only had the hook, we put it down then I went back and kept listening based on what I had for the hook “ogini ogini my baby “, I used that to create and wrote and wrote till I had what was solid. So for all of them, it was just different methods and ways that I used in writing them. At the end when we sat down to listen to the project, we could see that this was telling a story you get. Like from “Eyes on You”, it’s like instant lust to “Company” you know I want to be there with you, I want to keep you company, “Ungrateful” it’s damage…you’ve broken my heart f**k you and then “Set Me On Fire” is like really really argy…you can’t just get away with burning me up, karma is coming for you. After we saw all of that, we just gave it the name “Vivid Emotions” cause it made sense and that’s all for the project.

Q: I totally agree with the fact the project has a lot of emotions to it. What’s your favorite and least thing about being an artiste?

Naya: I like the freedom that comes with it. The fact that there are no rules…I mean there are general laws of music that you have to abide by or you won’t sell (chuckles) but you are free to create what you want, make arts that sound pretty to you. A lot of times, people like it and that’s awesome but you are making music for you and you are enjoying it. That’s actually the best part about being an artiste; whatever type of art you create.

Q: What word would you use to describe the kind of music you make?

Naya: The word I’d use to describe my sound right now is “real”. These days, I’ve been writing a lot more about things that I’m actually feeling so yeah it’s real.

Q: I totally agree to that… totally. As you move forward in your musical journey, who would you like to collaborate with in the industry ?

Naya: Everybody! I want to collab with everyone who makes good music. I just want to make pretty, pretty art with talented folks tbh.

Q: Awesome! Do you have any upcoming projects and when should we be expecting it?

Naya: yupp, I’ve got my own music coming soonn! I can’t wait!

Q: We can’t wait as well! Lastly, before we go..we would love to know the top five songs that you f with at the moment.

Naya:

Top 5 songs
1) SirBastien ft Naya Akanji- Girlfriend
2) Trippie Redd- Excitement
3) Nasty C and Ari Lennox- Black and White
4) Wizkid ft. Tay Iwar and Projexx- True Love
5) Naya Akanji & Lemar Abdul- Eyes on You💙

Thank you very much for doing this with us. We wish you more success as you go forward on your musical journey!

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it as well. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter @nayaakanji. Here’s a fanlink to her project as well: https://ampl.ink/1j0Qb

Xoxo, Axara.