"I missed talking through my music": NAYANA IZ on healing, heritage & vulnerability in rapping
WHEN NAYANA WAS JUST 16— she dropped out of school to pursue a music career full-time. "I was a young'un but I didn't want to waste anyone's time anymore, including my own. I knew deep down that I had to do music or nothing, so I just had to believe in myself for the first time in my life."
The genre-bending artist, who goes by NAYANA IZ (pronounced eye-zee), has gained faith in her own creative vision over the years. Born in India and raised in North London, she joined the NiNE8 collective, co-founded by artist Lava La Rue, soon after leaving school. "It was that support system I always needed," she says. "A lot of my confidence was built in those years when I first joined. It was good to have a family that did the same thing. It's very special."
Still, spending time alone and nurturing her own voice was critical in bringing her forthcoming music to life. "All that love was beautiful, but I still needed to have an intervention with myself," she admits. The pandemic provided just that space for self-reflection. While lots of people felt anxious at being cooped up inside, Nayana felt liberated. "I was in my happy place," she laughs, "I was like finally! I always spend a lot of time alone," she explains, "because I hadn't worked through my traumas and going outside just brought me a lot of anxiety. I just started judging myself way too much, so I decided it's better to just be in for a while and get to know myself."
Such growth was not without its share of heartbreak and loss. Reflecting seriously on some of her personal relationships, Nayana found herself reducing her social circle. "I knew what I stood for, but I wasn't standing up for it with certain people, and just being a bit of a pushover. It just made me value the fucking morals I set for myself, instead of just saying them and not really looking after myself properly." Nayana tells me she's a Libra sun with a Leo moon, zodiac placements celebrated for their charisma and strong values. "I feel powerful," she reflects, "because I feel like I'm in touch with this part of myself I feel like I haven't been in touch with for a good like, two, three, years. So it's like I'm getting to know myself again, which is really interesting."
In 2020, she released her debut EP SMOKE & FLY followed soon after by NO SMOKE VOL. 2, a collective album with the NiNE8 collective. "Everything was just better [during the pandemic]. I was just being more honest in my music. I spent so much time writing everything, even if it wasn't in a song — in a journal, or even just my notes app in my phone." Going from writing raps for herself to suddenly having a large following had been strange to adjust to and Nayana often found herself playing it safe. "The thing is, who I am is definitely "out" of whatever's going on in the industry right now," she explains. Spending time alone allowed her to tune out the opinions of others and cultivate authentic self-expression again. "I missed that, I missed talking through my music, and all it took was just being locked up in my room for a little bit."
Confronting her unfiltered self in “Breaking Point”
If anything can be said about Nayana's music, it's that she constantly pushes the boundaries of genre to lend full expression to her feelings and thoughts. Her latest single “Breaking Point” begins with soulful vocals, played over melancholic black-and-white MV footage, followed by up-tempo rap sections that remain unapologetic in their vulnerability.
Diving into the symbolism of her MV, Nayana tells us that the woman who sits silently smoking a cigarette throughout the entire video portrays a neighbour who has seen all aspects of her personality, including the messiest bits. "Everytime I'm angry, everytime I'm sad, it's just like I've been there in so many states of mind, I've been there screaming at my ex, I've been there screaming at my family, I've been there really happy with my friends, and I always noticed her watching me, and she was always smoking her cigarette in the same place. I thought maybe we could have the whole video through her point of view." Nayana explains that the woman is a metaphor for her own self-perception, stripped down and unfiltered: "That's why at the end, I go to sit with her, and then I'm just alone."
Nayana wrote one of the most powerful lines in the song, "A thousand years wouldn't teach you no better," when she was just fifteen. She admits that she was speaking at the time about the racist kids she went to school with. "It was almost like, although it's been so many years, it's not about the time, it's the fact that it's been this long and you still ain't giving up. You're still hurting us." Nayana adds that these traumatic experiences affected her relationship with her heritage for a long time. "I just tried to be quite white when I was a kid, so I wouldn't get bullied. I think the minute I got out of [school], I was finally in touch with my Indian side again." While the line alludes to experiences of racism, Nayana adds that in hindsight, it also foreshadowed some of the narcissists she'd come to repeatedly encounter in life. "The trauma bond!" she laughs. "You think that's the cure to everything. You finally feel whole. And the only way to get over it is to fill all those parts of ourselves that feel empty — by ourselves."
"I'm glad you asked about that line," she adds, "because that's the line that hits me the most."
Learning lyricism from MF Doom
While Nayana wrote the song lyrics for “Breaking Point” at fifteen, the rap lyrics came later in life. She admits she only really began rapping when some people she respected told her she wasn't good at singing. "So as a kid I was like, okay, I'm not good at singing, how do I still do this music thing?" While those comments dealt a blow to her self-esteem for a while, exploring rap and honing her lyricism ended up being one of the biggest blessings to both her self-expression and her musical career. "When I'm singing, I'll only sing from a certain place, and when I'm rapping, I'll only rap from a certain place. It's almost like two different voices, same person. But I think I definitely put more of my power in my rap. And I have more of a vulnerable side in my singing."
The late British rapper MF Doom is one of her most enduring lyrical inspirations. "How he spits is cool, but for me, it's really the lyrics and the meaning," she says. "And his flow. How he would make it almost like a dance, almost like a flow of water. How he would move was how my mum always told me to move, to live my life. That was her one piece of advice — with whatever you do, make sure you're a river, and you're flowing. Don't hold back. And I just got the same feeling in all of Doom's work."
Nayana feels that she's a lot more honest and vulnerable in her raps now, especially on “Breaking Point”, while in the past she would channel her ego more. That's another reason she admires Doom so much, with his masked persona and lyrics that forego much of the materialist flexing of other rappers. "He's just existing," she says. "It's interesting cause Doom's point of view was always observing — never reacting — and it's interesting because that's how my whole life has been. When I had not that many friends in school, all I was doing was observing and it was almost like, [Doom had] that voice that I have always felt."
On spirituality and language
Nayana has often cited classical Indian music as one of her creative inspirations. When asked whether she wants her own music to play a spiritual role for listeners in any way, she responds that she's reluctant to see it like that. "I think the goal for me is not to be that spiritual force because that's above me and above everyone, in my opinion. I think the goal for me is to be more in touch and to learn. I'm nowhere close to being a spiritual entity, so I couldn't make spiritual music I guess, but [I want] to share that knowledge."
Nayana adds that there is something almost mystical about the way that music emerging from India allows her to experience emotional release. "You know what it is, it's like the closest to what feels like home I guess, in terms of feelings. And it is that ground, where we know our pain has actually been, in a way." She believes learning Hindi would allow her to express herself in her music in a way she struggles to do in English. "It's weird cause I feel like with the English language, my feelings aren't coming through exactly the way I feel them. So it never feels like I'm saying enough to match what I'm feeling. Even when I don't understand what's being said [in Hindi music] I can feel every single thing. I just don't trust the English language," she adds with a laugh, "and it's the only language I know."
The importance of celebrating heritage without fetishizing it
In a cheeky song titled "How We Do," part of a 2019 ad campaign for the UK footwear brand Schuh, Nayana makes her way through London while rapping in a flaming red sari and surrounded by Indian dancers. "I knew it was going to be all over the UK and I just wanted every Indian kid to look at that and feel a little more at home here." She is well aware of the tendency of the industry to tokenize women of colour and put them in a box, making it difficult for them to have the same room to experiment and grow as other artists. Still, that realization makes it all the more important for her to be unapologetic in her self expression, regardless of how others receive it. "Just me existing, and doing what I do, that's why I do this. So that eventually, it isn't an abnormal thing."
Proudly repping her Indianness is also important to her given all those years of childhood trying to play it down, an experience plenty of immigrant kids grappling with racism in a foreign country can probably relate to. Nonetheless, she is thoughtful about her creative process and careful not to force her heritage just for the sake of it. "I don't want to push Indian instruments or vocalists just everywhere, but where it feels right, because I could just paint myself as "that Indian rapper" and just put it on everything, but [then] it does become a bit of an image."
To meaningfully expand the way she engages with Indian music, Nayana eventually wants to move back to India. Rather than being driven by commercial interests, she possesses a deep-rooted respect for India's cultural traditions and a humble desire to learn from others. "Right now, I could put a couple of Indian instruments in [a song] and make it sound like a mantra, but at the end of the day, I know deep down I'm not at home, and I can only do that when I am back home."
The vision that Nayana has for her future in India involves giving back to the community that has shaped so many of her values. "It's important for me to go and live how my grandparents actually grew up. I wanna have a farm one day. I want to learn everything, that whole way of life. It's cool living in the city, it's cool having a nice crib, but I think I'd learn more about myself and the world if I just go back to square one. And then carry that down generations if I ever have kids. I'd wanna work with children a lot. My dad's planning on starting an art school for some of the kids in the slums in India — that's the vision and we're working towards it."
A lot of Nayana's values come from her late grandmother, who was born and raised in Manipur and used to be a singer and Thang-Ta sword fighting dancer. "When I say that my grandma is an inspiration to me, it's definitely in music, but mostly in how I approach just everything in my life." While Nayana believes her main role on this earth is to create music, she wants to practice the selflessness her grandmother taught her in her everyday actions. We talk about one of her recent efforts to give back to her community. Because her own mother is Punjabi, raised in the city of Jalandhar, Nayana has been passionate about supporting the ongoing Indian farmer's protests. "I tried to raise some money — nobody wanted to buy my clothes — but I sent some money from my own pocket anyways," she laughs. "I know it's kind of scary to speak out about these things [in the UK], especially when living in this country can come with so much fear about speaking out, about who you are. But it's like once you do it, you're not just giving back to your country, you're standing up for it, like you didn't in the past. And that's the thing — I didn't stand up for who I am. And now, I'd be so disappointed in myself if I avoided it. That's not with my morals anymore."
Releasing her newest project into the world
While she feels a little anxiety at things opening up in London again, Nayana looks forward to performing live — especially with a new project lined up for listeners, of which Breaking Point is just a teaser. "I wasn't that proud of the last one," she admits of her EP SMOKE & FLY. "I think it just didn't come from the place I wanted it to. Like I had the vision but I didn't channel it 100%, and with this project, I've 100% channeled it. It's definitely the first collection of songs I've ever made that I've been this proud of. It's a mixture — the show's going to go from everyone moshing, to everyone feeling like they might need to cry." I tell Nayana that the emotional range of her project sounds like the eight rasas — or emotions — that characterize Indian performing arts and cinema, joking about the strength of her intuition. "That is so crazy — that's beautiful. I didn't even know I was onto something. It was just in my genetics," she laughs. "That's how I do everything — 8 stages of emotion."
Nayana's current tracks on repeat
1. POWALINE - liv.e
2. Unconditional Oceans - Brandy
3. An Idea - IAMNOBODI
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