Aya Nakamura refused to let 2024 define her by anything other than the music. After the racist firestorm around her Paris Olympics performance and endless tabloid noise, the French-Malian superstar returns with her fifth album Destinée – 18 tracks of unapologetic Aya-ism. At this point the numbers speak loud: over ten billion streams, the most-streamed Francophone artist ever, and a lane – that slippery cocktail of Afrobeats, zouk, R&B and Parisian slang – that still belongs to her alone. Three years after DNK and four after the era-defining AYA, she sounds sharper, colder, and quietly amused by everyone who tried to cancel her.
The sound is instantly home: rubbery log drums, minor-key synths, kompa guitars when Joé Dwèt Filé slides through, reggae sway with JayO, a surprise Latin-soul detour on the Kali Uchis-assisted “Baby boy”. She sprinkles Bambara phrases like salt and laces hooks with Gen-Z French argot that Google Translate will never catch. Tracks like the bouncy “Alien” let her play super-freak, while “Dis-moi” (with Shenseea) turns bedroom talk into veiled threats. The stripped “Blues” is the emotional gut-punch – just voice, soft keys and a kick that feels like a slowing pulse – proof she can still wreck you in under three minutes.
Underneath the flexes and brush-offs, Destinée is asking who really holds power when love, fame and a whole country keep trying to put you in a box. She never name-drops the Olympics or her ex, but every murmured line about anaesthesia and buried memories does the talking for her.
Some stretches lean hard on the same mid-tempo formula and the percussion can blur together, yet the attitude never dips. This is Aya Nakamura standing flat-footed in every contradiction that makes her her: icy and heartbroken, glamorous and exhausted, generous and ruthless. Destinée isn’t a comeback – it’s a reminder that she never actually left.
Stream Destinée:
Follow Aya Nakamura
Spotify – Facebook – Instagram
