FEATURE:
Spotlight
talents in the current music scene, Nia Smith is someone who should be on everyone’s radar. The South London artist mixes Soul and Neo-Soul into a wonderful and distinct blend. I think that next year will be a huge one for her. I am going to end with a review of her debut E.P., Give Up the Fear. I want to start off with an interview from Vogue. Speaking with her in the summer, they heralded Nia Smith’s rise as the new sound of Soul:
“It’s a cloudy Friday morning when singer-songwriter Nia Smith cycles to our interview at a Brixton bakery. “I will happily go out for half an hour and just Lime-bike,” says the south Londoner, wearing a crisp black shirt over billowing jeans as she sits down with a hot chocolate. It’s her way of unwinding from an increasingly hectic schedule. This past summer has seen Smith, still only 21, support SZA at BST Hyde Park and perform at London’s All Points East festival. We’re meeting a couple of days after her British Vogue shoot – her first ever. “I hate to be in front of the camera,” she says, grimacing, “but it was a good day!” Now she is gearing up for the long-awaited release of her debut EP this winter (despite fever-pitch buzz in the music industry, at the time of writing its title is still top secret). “It’s nice that people will be able to type my name [into Google] and have actual recorded music come up, rather than just my TikTok account,” she says, with a smile.
On her debut track, “Give up the Fear”, Smith’s vocals shine, bringing to mind early Adele, to say nothing of Amy Winehouse and Raye (all fellow Brit School alumni), while “Personal” – her second single – is the kind of groovy earworm any R&B artist would be glad to have in their early discography. Yet before finding music – the trombone was her unlikely starter instrument – Smith wanted to be a firefighter (“I’m scared of everything so I don’t know where that came from”). Growing up she was “probably a bit mischievous” but puts it down to being the middle child in a family of brothers, and she still lives just down the road from her family. “When my dad went out to work I would steal his iPod and memorise the lyrics to all the songs,” she says, laughing as she recalls plugging herself into Aretha, Tina, Nina… Smith was inadvertently coached by the greats. If things keep going her way, she could be on track to be one”.
I will move on to an interview from Rolling Stone. With such a distinct and special voice, this is an artist that is going to have a phenomenal 2025. I am new to her music but have been instantly hooked. If you have not discovered Nia Smith yet then you really need to check her out. Go and follow her on social media. A sensational young musician with a huge future ahead:
“It’s early morning in New York when Nia Smith appears on a zoom call, hours before preparation begins for her debut show in the Big Apple. Her debut EP isn’t even out at this point, but her prodigious talents have already landed her a support slot in the US with Elmiene, whose blend of neo-soul and more classic sounds have allowed him to sell out shows across the globe.
Like Elmiene, Smith deals in classic soul stylings, but the inclusion of her own musical upbringing allows it to take on a kaleidoscopic edge. The title track of her newly released EP Give Up The Fear is a heartfelt ode to the importance of being care free, while ‘Personal’ takes on a subtle dancehall edge – which led to a fresh version of the song with Popcaan.
Now, she’s on the cusp of becoming a truly important voice within UK music. You can read our whole Q&A with Nia Smith below.
You’re in in New York, how have the shows been supporting Elmiene?
They’ve been really good! I love New York, so it’s been really good. I mean, we only landed yesterday and I’ve never performed here so I’m excited.
We’re here to talk about your EP Give Up The Fear. What does this first body of work say about you as an artist?
I wanted to have a nice introduction to me, the different layers across five songs and I didn’t want to be boxed in too soon, so I feel like it represents the chapters of my life and the stories from it.
What are they? What personal side are you putting across?
Well I think ‘Give Up The Fear’ reflects a degree of self belief and ‘Don’t Cry’ reflects why I just want to live my best life as a single queen. There’s a song called ‘Reckless Soul’ too which reflects how I just had to be there for myself when I didn’t like life and ‘Personal’ is the best song on the EP in my opinion.
Why is it the best song?
I grew up listening to a lot of reggae and I think with the others you can’t tell how much reggae means to me. Obviously it’s not a reggae song, but it’s infused with reggae drums and parts like the bass line so it’s nice to have that in a song and let people know a bit more about my heritage.
You told us earlier this year about stealing your dad’s iPod as a kid to listen to different music. How did that shape you and what did you listen to growing up?
Well I didn’t really appreciate reggae as a kid because the baseline would rattle my bedroom! But stuff like Michael Jackson, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, James Brown, all the big voices. My dad played a lot of Amy Winehouse and Adele too.
What did you like about those artists?
Amy, Aretha and Adele were just proper stand out voices. But Amy had that rhythm, she had it all and she was definitely my favourite from that iPod selection.
What’s the one thing you want people to take away from this EP?
I kinda want people to find a piece of themselves in it. All the music is honest and the more honest you are, the more people can relate. I’m sure there’s people who have gone through every story in that EP. People can find truth in it. But if you want to dance, just listen to ‘Personal’!
And what’s next for Nia Smith?
I just want to play more live shows, man and make more music. Maybe another EP, but music where I can elevate the sound. Keep it in the same world, but deliver the next story and next part of Nia Smith”.
There are a couple of other interviews I want to source from before coming to a review of Give Up the Fear. It is one of the best and most important E.P.s of the year. Wonderland. included Nia Smith in their New Noise feature. Someone who is going to be included in a lot of ‘Ones to Watch in 2025’ pieces:
“Who have been your main inspirations—both musically and personally?
My main writing influences is my life and what’s around me but Amy and Lauryn defo inspire the music I make.
How has your upbringing and your cultural background shaped your artistry and creative outlook?
My Caribbean heritage, growing up on a lot of reggae and has defo influenced my melody and cadence choices. I’m a proud south Londoner from Brixton which I defo like to portray in my creative.
Congratulations on your debut EP! How are you feeling about the release? Talk us through the creative process of the EP? What were the biggest challenges you experienced?
Feeling good about the release. Finishing the EP with Jimmy (Napes) was a lot of fun. We had a full band in and it was a real collaborative process. The biggest challenge was knowing when something was finished which is why I decided to keep some of the demo vocals, which I love.
What are you trying to convey across the project, lyrically and thematically?
“Give Up The Fear” is about letting go and finding your inner child. That space where you create stuff without overthinking. I want people to find a piece of themselves within the songs. It’s a lil time capsule of my life. New era pending!
You’ve supported some massive names already this year, from Tems to SZA to Jordan Rakei. What have those experiences taught you? How did those achievements feel?
Feels great. I just like being on stage. It’s nice to have artists I love want to share their space with me. It’s nice seeing the room come together by the end of the set too.
Describe for us your essence as a live performer? What can we expect from an Nia Smith show?
It’s all about the voice. From a Nia Smith show you can expect the mic to be ON lol. Maybe a lil boogie during “Personal” and a great cover at some point.
What else have you got coming up, this year and beyond?
My EP is came out on the 8th so I’m now working on the new stuff, hopefully an elevated sound. some cheeky live show appearances and more shows etc”.
The final interview I want to mention is from The Line of Best Fit. Highlighting Nia Smith as an artist on the rise, this is someone I cannot recommend highly enough! Such a stunning voice and amazing songwriter. Someone who will put British Soul back at the forefront. A deep and interesting interview, I want to include quite a sizeable chunk of it as we get to learn a lot about a wonderful talent:
“Every line was pretty much a joke,” says Smith of her reggae-imbued second single. “It was about getting rid of that bad energy; we don’t have to be besties – we can be civil. Sometimes people make it seem like you have to be friends with everyone, but I don’t think it’s personal if you’re not my sort of person.”
Sometimes, there is a need to simply get a job done and, despite her young 20-years-of-age, Smith is not about time wasting. The Brixton native recalls times where she has walked into a studio to take care of business and been frustrated by the vibe.
“With the music industry, sometimes it feels like high school – there’s this clique over here, a clique over there” Smith adds. “Authenticity is really big to me; if it’s not that, I really struggle in situations. But I’ve made some really good friends in music.”
So far, these ‘good friends in music’ have certainly been of the covetable kind, most recently with dancehall icon Popcaan signing up to appear on the remix of “Personal”, which drops today. When Smith got the call, she couldn’t believe it. “My party song is ‘Clarks’, so he was on my main list of people I wanted.” Smith was adamant that, if it wasn’t an artist from her list, she didn’t want to release a remix – though she needn’t have worried about the end result. “It came back and it [was] great – he is great. I feel like it added some more grit. I met him at Unruly Fest [held for the first time in London this July] and he’s just a vibe.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Brennan Bucannan
Both “Personal” and Smith’s upcoming debut EP, were produced by Grammy-winner and Sam Smith collaborator Jimmy Napes – an artist who Smith admired in her younger years. All of her musical connections have “naturally come about”: she has been working with producer Dom Valentino “out of his bedroom” since she was “16 and he was 23”; likewise Ed Thomas, who has co-written for artists including Jayda G, Amaarae and Nia Archives.
As such, Smith was keen to see if her dream trio could work together to manifest a sound that encapsulated her smorgasbord of influences – from Lauryn Hill, Little Simz and Amy Winehouse to Chronixx and Bob Marley. “I feel like they all really appreciate reggae – not as much as me! – and R&B and soul and pop, and all those worlds infused into one. It was a perfect collision,” she says. “I got what I wanted from that.”
Smith’s passion for music has been a lifelong endeavour spurred by a family of music lovers. Her grandfather possesses what she describes as a “crazy” music collection, something her father emulated digitally with the iPod she would steal to sing along to “all the great voices” such as Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, James Brown, Michael Jackson. Her uncle is a producer, while Romeo from So Solid Crew is her father’s cousin. The first CD Smith’s mother bought for her was Rihanna’s single, ‘Rude Boy’, something she considers as making sense in hindsight, given she was accustomed to “waking up to dub bass from reggae shaking my room like crazy.”
Aged 14, Smith began to teach herself guitar but struggled to play other people’s songs – or perform at all. Instead, she found a canny workaround: “I was like, if I make my own songs, then no one’s gonna know how bad I’m playing it – because they don’t know the song. I found singing songs to people always scary,” she explains. “I would play the songs to my parents and then run back upstairs. I remember writing a song about my mum asking me to do dishes and I didn’t want to. It sounded like a heartbreak song – it was so dumb.”
A stint at the BRIT school studying musical theatre and, later, East London Arts & Music studying music instilled Smith with “hustle and drive”, a conviction to make things happen for herself; it was not long before she began booking any gig she could find. A southbank music festival? Sure. Lambeth Country Show at Brockwell Park? Smith was there – even if no one was in the audience. She found it gave her a buzz “just to live a little – all of that was so quick.”
Community is vital to Smith, an aspect of her growing whirlwind that brings her back to herself. This evening, for example, she is going bowling with friends – an opportunity to reclaim some time for herself after a busy day shooting and being grilled for this feature. Her friends make an appearance in the video for “Personal” because Smith feels “like it’s hard to create that sort of vibe with strangers.”
The acceleration of her momentum is documented between music videos: her debut, “Give Up The Fear” has Smith cycling through the night in black and white; meanwhile, “Personal” sees her level up, cruising around in a vintage convertible during the London summertime. Being in motion helps take the self-conscious pressure away, especially when it comes to expressing herself (“It’s going to be on YouTube forever”, after all) and it is clear that Smith finds it as hard to be static as she finds it necessary to cultivate the need to plough forwards in her career.
The sentiment anchors “Give Up The Fear”, a debut at striking odds with its follow-up single, “Personal”. A vulnerable piece of vintage R&B tinged with soul, the track’s brushed drums and lamentable keys give room for Smith’s incomparable bassy vocal to breathe. “The pain won’t stop until you give it up. Your heart is blocked until you give it up,” she intones. “I don’t wanna live like that.” For a first outing it is remarkably ruminatory, and Smith saw it more as an artistic statement than a play at the numbers game.
“It was the best introduction because of what it was about – giving up fear, letting go, and just creating the stuff you want to create,” she explains. “It was all about my high standards, overthinking everything I was making. I’m a crazy overthinker.” Smith recalls watching her ten-year-old brother create books and drawings for the fun of it and doing the same at his age. Now, with social media, the temptation to compare is always there, and fearless creativity becomes lost as the years tick by. “I had all this weight on my shoulders about how to write a song, which I’ve been doing all this time; why am I now thinking about it so deeply? It was about the pain of that, and letting it go.”
For all her bravado, Smith is not without a thread of self-doubt, and despite such achievements this propensity for perfectionist tendencies and high expectations of self meant her confidence ebbed and flowed. She had ideas of being a “teenage popstar” in part due to the success of artists like Billie Eilish, thinking “if I’m not a teenager when I’m doing this, I’ve failed; now, she realises “it’s really not that deep. When I turned 20, I was like ‘my teenage popstar dream is over’ – but it hadn’t even started yet. As long as I’m making music, I’m happy.”
However, such dreams were abruptly thrown into trepidation when Smith lost her voice last November. Two months later, it still hadn’t returned, and a consultation quickly informed her she was in need of surgery. It was a scary reinforcement that the gifts that let her pursue lofty dreams carried the risk of being finite. “My single [was] supposed to drop in a couple of weeks. I’d just moved out, so was living alone. All this change is happening. I learned some lessons from it.
“At the end of the day, we’re not built to sing,” Smith continues. “If I want to still sing when I’m 30, I’ve got to look after it now.” Back then she says she would “YOLO life – go out, scream, have fun with my friends;” now, she warms up and cools down, a drink and a late night is rare, as well as oily food. “Life’s more boring now ‘cause I think about everything; it’s just a part of a regime. It’s quite long and tedious.”
Whether it be grand or incremental, Smith’s eyes have always been set on the end goal, the bigger picture, but a sense of balance is also important. From “Give Up The Fear” to “Personal”, the progression from childhood to adulthood – and easing into one’s sense of self – is bolstered by finding your community, a chosen family. Currently, she is acknowledging the need to prioritise experiences, and living to fuel the work. “I have my current crew that I work with; some of them are taking breaks to live life, which I need to do as well. You can’t write if you’re not pouring from anything”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ciesay
I am going to end with this review for Give Up the Fear. It is one of the very best E.P.s of the year. I am excited to see what next year has in store for Nia Smith. A wonderful artist that, whilst new to me, is firmly in my mind. She has that impact on everyone who hears her music:
“Her voice can do impressive runs and hold onto notes like artists such as Beyonce or Mary J Blige. Her previously released singles “Give Up The Fear,” “Little Red Car” and “Personal,” which are on the EP were a smash hit and helped grow her online fandom. At just 20 years old, she has achieved more success than many artists ever dreamt of. This new EP marks the beginning of her career.
The first single “Little Red Car,” is a slow R&B infused pop song. It feels like an echoey dream-like sequence of chord progressions that bubble up into a beautiful melodic chorus. From the beginning of the song, it feels like we are just hearing a slow ballad. As we begin to hear more pop beats and a smooth bass tone, we’re invited to hear more of Smith’s vocal range abilities.
The song, which was co-written by Smith, blossoms into this beautifully written heartfelt hymn. “You set my soul on fire. Going way too fast in your little red car.” The words are simple but feel gut-wrenching when Smith sings to you. She’s exhuming so much passion and power behind her voice.
Even when she’s more laid back during each verse, she tells you this euphonious story from a female perspective in a relationship. A woman who’s aware that she is too deep in love with someone and feels overwhelmed by the encompassing emotions. Smith takes you along this journey and shows you the emotions she feels in each moment.
The second single “Give Up the Fear” is a sweet rhythmic battle cry to people struggling to overcome their problems. “The pain won’t stop till you let it go. You don’t believe it cause it said so. The pain won’t stop until you let it go. The more you know the less you know” are the lyrics of the song. Daunting and intrusive, they make you feel like you’ve been cracked open and exposed. It makes you reflect on the deeper underlying insecurities you’ve been holding onto.
Smith’s writing is always an attempt to find a deeper truth within us. Why do we hold onto these fears of the future that haven’t yet occurred? Is there something holding me back from becoming my better self? The self-doubt and cries for help are what Smith is singing to.
The laid-back beats and reggae-like harmonies make it a lighter, heartfelt tune. Smith is a master at creating raw emotional vulnerability. Each song lays a path for listeners to delve deeper into themselves and connect with themselves.
Photograph of Smith smiling and posing holding up a magazine article of her interview and picture. Photo by Instagram account: Delali Ayivi.
The third single “Reckless Soul” is a pure but simple, heavenly ballad. It’s airy and light but affects you emotionally at the core. The crisp sounds make a beautiful flow over the lyrics. Smith sings simply: “Take me where you go. A place only I know. And I will hold you close. And I’ll save your reckless soul.”
Smith’s unique isolated vocals play alongside the guitar, without any background noise. Once she builds up the hymn, she leaves without singing any words and the song continues with the sound of an electric guitar. Smith sings from her heart and has perfect composition in her music.
Nothing feels out of place or overdone. Despite only having one EP, she has proven that she has a diverse range and ability to shift from different genres effortlessly.
The fifth and last single “Don’t Cry” from Smith’s EP is one of the most popular. During an interview with Rolling Stone UK, Smith said that “Don’t Cry reflects why I just want to live my best life as a single queen.” The upbeat rhythmic hymn calls for women to not make any devotion to men and live their best life.
Rather than come off as petty and resentful, Smith reflects on the beautiful possibilities that come with being single and being happy. “Don’t cry, oh yea. I’m good on my own, never promised devotion. My eyes are bored of emotion, don’t Cry” sings Smith. The lyrics tell single women everywhere that being single is a happy and harmonious thing to celebrate and not to look back in bad faith.
Smith’s vocals capture the song’s vulnerability, while the jazzy background beats drum up a momentous catchy tune and make you bop your head. It’s a simple but powerful message for women seeking relief from break ups or bad relationships.
Smith is one of the latest rising stars who is creating her own path in the music industry despite the oversaturation of pop music. She has character, lyrical talent, musical composition and a unique voice.
This EP is a great introduction to the young promising singer and a beautiful list of R&B hits you’ll never stop singing. If you would like to listen to Smith, you can check her out on YouTube, Apple Music, and Sound Cloud”.
An amazing artist who has such an enormous talent, everyone needs to hear Nia Smith. She is someone I have recently found but has been on the music press’s radar for a while now. Next year is going to be a really successful one for her. If you are new to Nia Smith then you need to make sure that she is in your mind. An artist who is going to…
DEFINE 2025.
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