Thursday October 28, 2021
BY JAMES KEITH
For the past few weeks, a song called “Isii Nafta” by a Somali singer called Nimco Happy has been doing the rounds. The singer had already cultivated a respectable fanbase back in Somalia and East Africa, but she wasn’t hugely well known in the West, until footage of her performance started doing the rounds, first on TikTok and then Instagram and Twitter.
So far the song, which is sung in a mixture of Somali, English, Arabic and Swahili, and the footage have been watched thousands and thousands of times. It’s even spawned its share of remixes and if you’ve been out clubbing recently, chances are you’ve seen its astonishing effect on the dancefloor.
Concern was raised at one point when the track was uploaded to an anonymous Spotify account. Keen that Nimco Happy get the royalties payments she deserves, the internet quickly rallied and today Buzzfeed reporter Ikran Dahir took to Twitter to announce that “habryar [auntie] Nimco has secured the bag” thanks to “Somalis across the board”, spearheaded by Polydor A&R Muna Ruumi.
You can stream the track via Nimco Happy’s official Spotify account below, or you can choose a different streaming service via her website here.