FEATURE:
Spotlight
Nxdia
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A mighty…
Egyptian-Sudanese artist based out of the U.K., Nxdia is someone who is fresh to my ears but is locked in my bones and heart. I love their sound and vibe. I had not heard of them until maybe a month or so ago and they have been heralded by the likes of NME. If you have not heard of them then please check out their social media. Before getting to some interviews, I wanted to grab from a bio that Nxdia provided for Sound City when she played there earlier this month. A phenomenal and engaging live performer, expect their name to be on festival bills for a long time to come:
“Hey, hello, I'm Nxdia - which although spelt that way is pronounced Nadia, I get a bunch of 'nucks-dia's' but it's dying down now (thankfully). I figured I'd give you some trivia about myself seeing as we're both here.
When I think about music and all the stuff I want to do, I feel like a little kid again shoving sparkly 'concert tickets' under my parents door, just happy to be there.
I really want to see a moose, I think they're ridiculously big and I can't fathom seeing them in person, so now it's become a goal.
I was born in Cairo, Egypt and spent most of my childhood there, there's nothing like my khatlo fatma's cooking - it's my favourite thing - especially the mashi kromb.
I've kept diaries all my life, it's my way of documenting stuff and writing down my feelings to turn them into songs down the line.
I don't sleep with a pillow, but I have them there anyway.
I can't wait to see how everything goes - if you're here & you're along for the journey, I really really appreciate it - can't wait to see what we can do together”.
Listen to some of Nxdia’s singles from last year. Instantly memorable songs like Jennifer’s Body, Feel Anything and She Likes a Boy. Their new cut, More!, is phenomenal. Boys Clothes and Feel Anything. Alternately grumbling, bass-heavy, buzzing and electric, they are capped off with Nxdia’s distinct lyrics and incredible voice. Maybe one or two songs having the same sort of vocal tone as Wet Leg but different in a musical sense. You get this familiarity and originality. Embers of past decades and scenes fusing with something fresh, modern and personal.
I am going to start with a 2024 interview from NME before moving to some 2025 pieces. Spotlighting Nxdia around the time of She Like a Boy’s release, their music was a viral sensation on platforms like TikTok. I often feel it is too common or underrating artists if they are labelled a TikTok sensation. It doesn’t seem to be as respectful as you’d like. Maybe I am overthinking it. Nxdia is much more than a viral sensation. Depth to their music that is much more worthy of exploration:
“We’re speaking to Nxdia (born Nadia Ahmed) in the weeks after their first viral song ‘She Likes A Boy’, which has netted nearly 5 million views on TikTok. It’s a classic tale of an unrequited lesbian love, but with an added twist – Nxdia sings in both English and Arabic. And they’re stoking fans’ curiosity about the language by translating their songs on TikTok, bringing everyone into their world of zesty pop-punk melodies.
Unlike English, Arabic doesn’t have a standard dialect; the language has significant regional variations, which means it’s not always mutually intelligible between Arabic speakers from different countries. But if it did have a standard dialect, perhaps it might be Egyptian Arabic, transforming Nxdia’s lyricism into a gateway for learning Arabic.
“Egypt has a dialect that’s very easy to understand”, Nxdia explains. “Egyptian TV series and films are extremely popular. In some places like Morocco or Algeria, the Arabic is spliced with other languages like Spanish or French, so it feels slightly more difficult to understand. But with Egyptian Arabic, if you speak Arabic, you usually understand it.”
Life has made it very difficult for Nxdia to embrace their identity at times. Growing up in Cairo, the Sudanese-Egyptian artist was bullied for their darker skin, and experienced further discrimination upon moving to Manchester as an eight-year-old.
But speaking to NME as just one of many young, queer Arab people that live their lives freely today, Nxdia is thoroughly energised to be making music – and they’re determined to do it their way: “When I was 15, I woke up, and I was like, ‘No one’s opinion matters but your own,'” they tell us. “You’re born as yourself, you live as yourself, you die as yourself. You’re always stuck with yourself, so you might as well like yourself.’”
PHOTO CREDIT: Joshua R Drakes
You wrote ‘She Likes A Boy’ about an unrequited crush – does your crush know about the song?
“I don’t think so! I don’t think she even knows it would be about her.
“She was at the school next to mine. I would get the bus to school because I lived about 30 minutes away. There was like this girl at the back. I thought she was so pretty, but you know how some people just have a warmth to them? I just love it.
“So she was talking about this stupid gangly boy. He was really horrible and he went to the all boys school. I would sit there and we’d talk about it. We’d be talking about guys that she liked, but I never saw them, so I didn’t mind. But when she started liking this guy, I don’t know what happened to me man… I was like, ‘Why do you need him? I’m right here!’ He was about my height, what’s different? Obviously a lot [laughs].
“But I lost contact with her, and I think she has a kid now. I’m pretty sure that’s why I stopped seeing her around.”
How did you journey towards your current alt-pop style?
“I was obsessed with Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Simple Plan. Marina [FKA and the Diamonds] was a huge thing for me because she was weirdly operatic. And Stromae was my introduction into bilingual music. I remember seeing ‘Tous Les Mêmes’ and seeing that video of him and he was like half woman, half man. And I was like, ‘Whatever that is, I’m that!’”
Why is making bilingual music important to you?
“It was important to me to start writing English and Arabic because I came from a different country: I speak Arabic to my mom only, I don’t have other people that I’m speaking Arabic with. I need people because I’m such an extrovert and I love people. I want to form a community here, and make people feel less like how I did when I was 13 – quietly calling my mum, talking in Arabic quietly so the other school kids wouldn’t hear – as I needed that.”
How has the queer Arab community reacted to your music?
“I can’t tell you how many queer Arabs have reached out and they’re telling me their problems or things that they’re going through, because they have absolutely no one else to talk to. I’m finding that the conversation around Palestine has been heartbreaking over the last year, just seeing the amount of dismissal. It’s crazy because I grew up in a place where I inherently knew about this – my mum would take me to Free Palestine protests from the age of 11.
“It’s bizarre because even with everything that’s happening in Sudan right now – huge political issues, people dying, there’s so many people who don’t have access to basic things you need to survive – I always feel like nothing’s been talked about enough. Part of that is because I feel connected to it, these are people that are like me.”
What kind of music do you want to make in the future?
“I just want to make stuff that really goes off live. I’m thinking about people singing it back and trying to imagine what it would sound like in a room. So I’m just trying to make loads of stuff that feels exciting, fun, different and cool. Pop, but with the Arabic influence. I sampled Donia Massoud, who is an amazing artist, and she covered this traditional Arabic song ‘Batnadini Tani Leh’, which is ‘Why are you calling me again?’ There was stuff like that where I was like, this is fascinating.
“I went to Luxor and Aswan in December. There was this guy on my tour showing us around, and he was talking about a Queen Hatshepsut like, ‘She wanted to be a man, she wanted to be a king.’ I recorded it and I’d love to include stuff like that because fuck yeah! She was so successful, she introduced trading from Sudan and Somalia and all these spices. It was just nuts. There’s some cool ass people in Egypt”.
I would also advise people to look at this interview from last year where Nxdia discusses, among other things, childhood crushes and the queer community. I am going to move to this piece from huck. Nxdia discusses how poetry has become an escape for them. If you have not heard their music yet then make sure that you do:
“Nxdia: Music was always in my mind. I was a bit of a loner as a kid growing up in Cairo – I got on with everyone, but I also spent a lot of time alone, writing, playing pretend and humming. I didn’t always know how to articulate how I was feeling or processing the world around me, but I always found that writing, pen to paper, the words flowed out so much more and helped me to make sense of stuff. My journals and poems became an escape for me. I’d listen intently to the music mum would play me – she was an activist, still is – songs like ‘Behind the Wall’ by Tracy Chapman, ‘Mercedes Benz’ by Janis Joplin and Donia Massoud’s version of ‘Betnadini’. These were songs I really remember, loved and connected with because of her. While we were still in Cairo, I discovered big pop artists like Britney Spears and Katy Perry, and I became so obsessed. I’d put on shows for my mum, completely immersed in the feeling of pop.
Then we moved to Manchester and I remember feeling even more like a loner. There were things I didn't understand culturally, people were friendly enough, but everything around me had changed. I’d literally never seen so much rain in my life. I’d gone from having my entire family nearby and food I’d grown up with in our flat in Cairo, to a completely new place, it was a huge change.
The humming and the whirring words in my head intensified. I still kept my journals and wrote poems to try and figure out my feelings. I’d write all these little songs on my ukulele and eventually a bit on a classical guitar, then I started to do YouTube covers and originals. I wanted to share music, but I didn't know how. It was just my way of understanding my inner dialogue and the new world I was in. I’d watch so much slam poetry, struck by how people would play with words, it was like a new world was opening up. Then one day when I was singing a song I’d written under my breath, a girl called Safiya shoved her ear in my face. “What are you singing? What song is that?” I told her it was just one I'd made up, and she smiled wide and went “Oh, you should be a singer!” and there the seed was planted. It had never occurred to me that you could just want to be singer.
As I started to dream, I imagined a community where I fitted in. And actually, starting my journey into music immediately brought me a sense of connection I hadn’t had before, it made me feel less like a freak, less like I was doing life wrong. I felt like there were people out there who knew what I was going through so intimately, because they were singing things that felt like they'd been cherry-picked from my brain. Marina and the Diamonds was huge for me, her Family Jewels album and Electra Heart meant so much to me, the self-reflection, the darkness in big pop and clever writing.
It wasn’t until I was 20 that I’d shared music in English and Arabic. I’d written in Arabic and English before and I was kind of shot down by some people around me at the time, saying they didn’t get it or it didn’t make sense, which knocked my confidence a lot, seeing as I’d been teased a lot about my heritage and background. I even used to talk to my mum so quietly on the phone in Arabic that no one would hear me. One day I was talking with my friend and mentioned I wanted to sing in both languages, so my music felt like me completely. She literally just said: “Who cares, do what you want to do,” and I felt like my brain just opened up and refused to be limited anymore. I remember the first time I included Arabic in my songs, I was bouncing off the walls, so excited that I could finally be me. I felt free.
Recently, I’ve felt free in a different way. It’s genuinely a privilege and an honour that I get to make music and perform now, that there are people listening, who feel seen and connected with me, that we see each other for who we really are and that makes me happier than I can explain. A big thing for me was always a certain disconnection I felt with my body, a dysphoria I guess - it felt like another bridge between me over there and the “real” me. After years of feeling like a part of me wasn’t meant to be there, wearing binders and imaging clothes fitting a certain way, I finally had top surgery a few months ago. Suddenly, I’m experiencing another feeling of freedom, the lifting of a huge weight (literally), I've never felt more like I'm forming into myself, like I’m doing what I want without asking for permission. ‘Boy Clothes’ is a celebration of that, the confidence to not to give a fuck, wear what I want, sit how I want, be whoever the fuck I want. I spent too long being scared to voice what I wanted and to be who I am, but I’m over that now, I want to be free. I want to put myself out into the world and speak out loud all the thoughts and feelings that have been playing on loop in my head since I was a kid”
Having recently played Brighton’s Great Escape, there will be this wave of new interest and bookings. New festival slots and more incredible singles. I am not sure what Nxdia has planned regarding an E.P. or album. If there are going to be more scheduled for the summer. I am ending with an interview from Exeposé:
“24 year old alt-pop artist Nxdia (pronounced Nadia), otherwise known as Nadia Ahmed, has taken the queer music scene by storm. Blending English and Arabic within her music, Nxdia’s music focuses on themes from queer love to androgyny and gender identity.
Her popularity increased rapidly after the release of her hit single, She Likes A Boy, in 2024. The song went viral, hitting over five million views on TikTok within weeks of release. The song describes the artists’ own unrequited crush on a girl, and the relatable feeling of disappointment that comes with watching someone you like pursue another. The chorus is upbeat and catchy, and it’s easy to see how it became so popular. Their EP titled “in the flesh” came out in 2023, featuring more Egyptian vocal runs combined with their usual angsty style. Their latest single, “Boy Clothes” is upbeat, energetic, and focuses on their ongoing journey with gender dysphoria.
Nxdia features political and introspective themes in much of their music, stating that “navigating adult life for me has been deconstructing a lot”. They have frequently advocated for Palestine and Sudan, and describe their upbringing and identity as having a large influence on their music and politics. They were born in Cairo and moved to Manchester aged eight, describing themselves as a “bit of a loner”, struggling with being a third culture kid. Singing in both languages has now become a form of liberation for them: “the first time I included Arabic in my songs, I was bouncing off the walls”. Nxdia says their aim is to create community through their music, focusing on continuing their trend of music that is “pop, but with the Arabic influence” whilst pursuing fresh, interesting collaborations.
They have recently been added to the bill for the Great Escape Festival in Brighton from the 14th-17th May. In 2023, they played at the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival and were included in Spotify’s Our Generation playlist. With their experimental style and heartfelt lyrics, they are certainly one to watch”.
Go and follow this amazing artist. I did not catch Nxdia when they released their first couple of singles, but I am now caught up and on board. It is going to be thrilling seeing where Nxdia heads. Such an important artist. This incredible queer Arab artist will no doubt inspire and give strength to others like her. Having achieved so much already, there are going to be more successes and highlights…
THROUGHOUT 2025.
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Follow Nxdia
