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All her life, people have been trying to figure out. The French-Haitian singer-songwriter, a third-culture kid who flitted across multiple continents in her childhood, has long known the importance of staying authentic to herself.
After all, “what else would I do?” she tells NME over a call from her home in France. “I’m so complex, and I always had this fear that I’m too complicated, but I never let it influence my moves. I kept pushing through.”
Naïka on The Cover of NME. She wears a jacket by Selezza London, shoes by Farrago and jewellery by Sarah Jane Palmer. Credit: Tom J. Johnson for NME
Naïka hears “all the time” that there are “too many influences” in her music; for her debut album ‘Eclesia’ – which was sung in English, French and Haitian Creole – she cites inspirations that range from Britney Spears to Miriam Makeba. “Even how I look,” she adds, pointing to her parentage, being born to a French father and a Haitian mother with Lebanese and Syrian-Palestinian ancestry. “People want to immediately figure you out so they can categorise you. Being from Haiti, people call me out [and say] I’m not really Haitian. When I’m in Haiti, I get told I’m Arab. I’m French, but when I’m in France, they ask me where I’m from. The last couple of years, I’ve grown more into accepting my pluralism, multiculturalism, and multifacetedness.”
In turn, fans have embraced Naïka. We speak during a rare day off from her sold-out European tour. Her team has been at work upgrading to larger venues in Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington D.C. to meet the demand for her upcoming North American tour. It’s a moment Naïka has been working towards since she was a little girl, listening to her dad play guitar. “It’s everything I could have dreamed of,” she says with a soft laugh. “I’ve been [making music] for a minute now, building my career and my fan base and my community brick by brick. This album really solidified everything.”
“I always had this fear that I’m too complicated, but I never let it influence my moves”
Naïka was born in Guadeloupe, living all over the world – in the Caribbean and South Pacific, and also Kenya, France, and South Africa – thanks to her father’s work in renewable energy. At 16, her family moved back to Miami, where she set her sights on a future in music, practising Britney Spears’ dance moves and listening to Usher and Destiny’s Child. “I had moved from South Africa. My dad had just lost his job, and my family was in shambles.” She pauses and breaks into laughter. “And I was like, ‘Well, this is my opportunity to make my dreams come true!’”
She performed in showcases around the city and appeared in plays and musicals. She attended Berklee College of Music, where she recorded her first songs. Then she moved to Los Angeles, where she began collaborating with songwriters and producers. A few EPs released between 2020 and 2022 allowed her to grow a steady following, but her breakout moment was the spiralling dance track ‘Sauce’, an early example of her blend of Caribbean, R&B, and pop inspirations. The song appeared in an Apple commercial and quickly racked up millions of streams. Now, Naïka has an ambivalent relationship with her early music. “I don’t love ‘Sauce’,” she laughs. “I can’t stand that song. But I owe her so much respect. She’s helped me live and stay on my feet. I never wanna disrespect that song, but I can’t listen to it anymore. Those songs reflect the very beginning of my career and my exploration of my sound and my artistry.”
Credit: Tom J. Johnson for NME
Naïka wanted ‘Eclesia’, which was unveiled in February, “to be an introduction of who I am to the world”, she says. “I gathered all of the influences, all of the sounds I grew up with that have shaped my sonic DNA.” She hand-picked the team she wanted to make the album with, a tight-knit group of close friends she considers family, gathered them in a “little house”, and sat them down with a playlist. “I explained to them, ‘This is from Haiti. These are the drums from the South Pacific I used to dance tāmūrē to. This is Miriam Makeba, an artist from South Africa who has really shaped my life and my upbringing. This is Charles Aznavour, whose songs my dad would sing me to sleep with. This is the Britney Spears song that completely changed my life’.” She also put together mood boards with collections of photos from her childhood. “I showed them the world I wanted to build before the creative process started.”
She co-wrote much of ‘Eclesia’ with one of her best friends, Noémie Legrand, who she wrote her first fully French song ‘Belle, Belle!’ with. She tapped Sebastian Tores, one of her closest friends from Berklee, to executive-produce. Grammy-nominated producer Kwame “KZ” Kwei-Armah Jr., whom she found through his work with Amaarae on ‘Fountain Baby’, worked on the album, as did producer Caye, longtime collaborator Marlon Roudette and Haitian-Guyanese DJ/producer Michaël Brun, who she considers a mentor. “[Tores] is from Mexico, Marlon is from the Caribbean. Kwame is from the UK, and he’s also Caribbean. Noémie is French and grew up in Hong Kong. It’s a mélange, a blend of different cultures, people from everywhere finding home in each other.”
Naïka wears a top and skirt by Sketch-Y, jewellery by Sarah Jane Palmer and Xhen Xhen, and shoes by IZIE. Credit: Tom J. Johnson for NME
Together, they crafted a sound Naïka calls “world pop”, “but in quotations”, she says. “That’s how I’ve always defined my sounds. There’s such a thing as world music and I don’t love the term, because I feel like it’s so general and like a catch-all for everything that’s not in the Western world. But I feel ‘world pop’ makes sense to describe what I’m doing.”
‘Eclesia’ shifts seamlessly between Afro-Caribbean beats, Haitian konpa and South Pacific drums, between French, Creole and English throughout 13 vibrant and vulnerable tracks. On lead single ‘Bloom’ she declares “Island girls are blessing ‘til nobody can reach them” over a glitchy dance beat. The alluring ‘Matador’ explores what it means to defy societal standards imposed on women. In ‘Blessings’, she casts spells of positive affirmation, and atop the deceptively calming rhythm of ‘What A Day!’, she sings about war and injustice: “What a day for crime/ Kids are dying in Palestine/ Blood is paving Congolese mines/ And the world keeps going.”
“People want to immediately figure you out so they can categorise you”
For Naïka, responding to the violence in the world as an artist is natural, necessary and a basic responsibility. “I’m a human being and I care about other human beings’ lives and protection and freedom and basic rights,” she says. “I’ve always written songs about the world and how it’s affected me. It’s how I process what’s happening. Whether it’s ‘My Body, My Choice’ [that] I wrote about women’s rights at Berklee, or ‘Before He Falls’, I wrote about the war in Syria, it’s something I’ve always done.”
Outside of her music, she also works as an ambassador for Fleur de Vie, a Haitian NGO focused on education and building safer schools. “I grew up in countries where I would see extreme poverty, and kids my age didn’t have shoes on and were in the street when I was on my way to school. I’ve been aware of the lottery of life from a very young age.” For Naïka, art may be a form of resistance, but it’s also how she heals. “Music has really strong frequencies. It’s a powerful art form,” she explains. “When I see songs I’ve created to express how I was feeling and my vulnerabilities, my emotions, my thoughts resonate with other people in a way that’s stuck with them, that’s the biggest thing in the world for me. Truly.”
Credit: Tom J. Johnson for NME
NME sees firsthand just how deeply Naïka’s music resonates with fans in a small room in New York City a month before the album’s release. Anthurium flowers decorate the microphone stand. A vintage rug, small couch, rattan furniture, and plants fill the compact stage. Naïka dances barefoot on the bar, to fans’ enthusiastic cheers, before gracefully moving to an ornamental platform inspired by a picture of her childhood apartment and her mother’s style, which she describes as “tropical vintage glam”. ‘Eclesia’ was always meant to be performed in a room full of people. “When I found the name, I looked up what it meant,” she says. “In ancient Greece, it meant a coming together of people. That was the ‘click’ for me. This is what I want this album to be called, because that’s really what I hope to do with my music.
“I feel like I’ve never belonged to one community. To see the audience and to see people from all different walks of life, all different religions, different genders… When I see this diversity, it really makes me feel at home.” Through her music, she wanted to create her own world, and her fans have joyfully joined her there. “I was like, ‘I’m not fully going to be accepted anywhere, so let me just make my own universe for my [feelings] and for others who feel the same way.’”
The ‘Eclesia’ tour’s last stop is in Miami, where both Naïka’s musical life and career began. “I didn’t even think about that until you just said it,” she says of the full-circle moment where she’ll play at the Miami Beach Bandshell next month. “What’s so funny is that it’s at a venue that every time we would drive past it, my dad would say, ‘One day I want to see you play there,’” she remembers. “The universe works in crazy ways sometimes.”
Naïka’s album ‘Eclesia’ is out now via AWAL.
Listen to Naïka’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Erica Campbell
Photography: Tom J. Johnson
Photography Assistance: Percy Walker-Smith
Hair: Jess Summer using Cloud Nine
Styling: Lauren Croft
Styling Assistance: Lena Angelides
Location: Studio Endura
