Voices of the Underground

Nala grew up between Lagos and Los Angeles, which is perhaps the most useful possible background for an artist trying to make music that refuses to stay in one place. Her father is Nigerian, her mother is from South London, and she spent her formative years moving between cities, cultures, and musical traditions that most people experience as separate worlds.

The result is a sound that is genuinely difficult to categorize — bass-heavy and rhythmically complex, drawing on UK garage, Afrobeats, Miami bass, and broken beat in ways that feel organic rather than calculated. Her live shows, which incorporate live instrumentation and a rotating cast of collaborators, have developed a reputation as some of the most exciting performances in contemporary club music.

She is also, it should be said, one of the most thoughtful people working in electronic music today. She talks about her work with a precision and a depth that is unusual in a scene that often prizes feeling over analysis. She has read widely, thought carefully, and arrived at positions that are genuinely her own rather than borrowed from the discourse around her.

We met her in Los Angeles, in the rehearsal space she shares with her band. She was in the middle of preparing for a run of European dates, and the room was full of equipment in various states of assembly. She made tea, sat down, and talked for three hours without once seeming like she was performing.

In Conversation