Annahstasia has a once-in-a-generation sound. Deep yet ethereal, the Nigerian-American singer’s vocals have a timeless quality that stops the listener in their tracks. “I've always had a very different voice,” she says.
The realisation came at age 13, when she tried to teach herself to sing Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody for a school talent show. “I couldn't sing as high as her,” she remembers, eventually opting to cover Amy Winehouse’s Valerie.
“There was silence after I finished singing, and then a slow clap,” says Annahstasia. “Afterwards, all the music teachers at the school came up to me and they were like, you need to get on developing this skill.” She dutifully joined the jazz and musical theatre clubs.
Her upbringing in Los Angeles was already a creative one. Her parents are fashion designers and artists. “I had like the super disciplined, precise artist, and then I had the very free and kind of chaotic artist archetype in the same household,” says Annahstasia. “Watching them balance each other, and teaching me about what it was to be an artist.” They also exposed her to an eclectic mix of music. “It was Fela Kuti some mornings, Fiona Apple the next.”
She was 17 years old and waiting outside of school where she was scouted by someone from the entertainment industry. “I was just singing and some guy came up to me and asked me if I ever thought about getting into music,” says Annahstasia. “He talked to my parents, he charmed them with the dream.”
“If I could talk to my 17 year old self, the only thing that I would tell her is: get a lawyer.”
Annahstasia’s “discovery” sounds like an LA fairytale, but it morphed into a nightmare. “If I could talk to my 17 year old self,” she says. “The only thing that I would tell her is: get a lawyer.”
She became one of the many women — Meghan Thee Stallion, Chappell Roan, and Rico Nasty included — trapped in a contract that hindered their artistic development. Producers trying to squeeze her sound into something that didn’t fit. “It was definitely a whirlwind of promises and potential,” she says. “[The label thought] I was just going to be some sort of pop diva. I was like, ‘Nah, I don't think that that's quite what my voice is here to do’.”
It was a painful experience, but now at the age of 30 she can reflect that it taught her a lot. “I had to spend many years waiting, cultivating a sense of self and my relationship to music,” she explains. “Though it was quite traumatic to have your creative output cut off from you like that, There was a forging that happened in that in-between, a willpower that was strengthened.”
Finally free, she has released her debut album Tether. Annahstasia defines her genre as power folk “It is music of the people,” she explains. “It is music of the culture and the context that you come from. It borrows aspects of rock and soul and jazz and other maximalist genres and pulls it into the finer fabric of folk music.”
“We're all sellouts at this point in capitalism. There's no purism to be had”
Making music for the people means engaging with some fairly heavy topics. In her song Silk and Velvet, she wrestles with what it means to be an artist trying to survive in the capitalist system. “Maybe I’m a moralist, an anti-capitalist/ Who sells her dreams for money,” she sings.
“It’s me neutralising the reality that everything that I do, and everything that we do, is hypocritical,” Annahstasia explains. “We're all sellouts at this point in capitalism. There's no purism to be had.” The key, she says, is not to confine your artistic dreaming to your own goals and achievements within the limitations of money and success. “My dream is not just for me, my dream is for my family and for my community,” she says.
With Tether released, she’s back on the road touring across America before making appearances at festivals - including Latitude in the UK. She’s hoping it will be a more chill experience than her UK festival debut at Across The Tracks a few years ago.
“That was a hilarious debacle,” she chuckles. “I was like, I'm never doing a British festival again.” But she’s hopeful this time will be different. “I'm actually excited because it's gonna be in the forest, and it's gonna be much more my vibe”.
If camping is not your vibe, however, you can also catch her in London later this year where she will be performing at St Pancras Old Church in November. "I've been performing [Tether] live for the last three years," adds Annahstasia, "People are finally arriving to it."
But touring also means being away from her community back in LA. It’s an all the more painful experience given the traumatic scenes playing out in her hometown, where immigration raids have sparked riots.
“I've been on the road while all of this is happening, I'm watching it through my phone,” she says. “I'm emotionally affected, it's horrific to see and the violation of human rights that are happening in the city, across the country.” She has been doing her best to raise awareness and share fundraising efforts on her social platforms, but it’s hard to be so far away from home.
“I'm constantly struggling with being such a nomadic person by virtue of what I do,” she says. “I sometimes feel a lot of guilt around like the requirements of my work, to constantly be gone, and what community requires which is for you to stay.”
Tether is out now on drink sm wtr.
