Since the start of her career, Aya Nakamura has faced setbacks, discrimination and harassment every step of the way. Nakamura is a music superstar. She is the most-listened-to French-speaking artist in the world, and the only woman to feature in the country’s top 20 bestselling albums of 2023. Her 2018 hit Djadja has reached almost 1bn listens on YouTube, and in 2021 her second album surpassed 1bn streams on Spotify. When she announced two concerts at the legendary Bercy arena in Paris last year, tickets sold out in 15 minutes – unprecedented for a French-speaking artist.
Yet from shows where presenters struggle to pronounce her name to public debate about the unorthodox way she uses the French language, the French-Malian singer can, it seems, never be judged solely on her music.
