Trying to describe Natanya’s music feels a bit like trying to hold light in your hands – it slips, refracts, becomes something else entirely. I have been a fan ever since I witnessed her open for FLO in 2023 and her songs have been the fuel for many of my Cambridge late-night study sessions. And yet every time someone asks what she sounds like, I reach for metaphors instead of genres. She’s an artist whose work doesn’t just bend convention – it struts past it with a wink.

Her songs move like weather systems – Alternative R&B dissolves into pop; jazz brushes against grunge; classical training meets rock textures. She doesn’t blend genres so much as she dissolves the borders between them.

“She’s an artist whose work doesn’t just bend convention – it struts past it with a wink”

Born with perfect pitch, Natanya grew up in a home where music was a second language. Her father, Motown‑obsessed and a church bongo player, and her mother, an 80s funk devotee with her own singing aspirations, created a sonic ecosystem that shaped her ear early. Weekends at the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy deepened her musical fluency, exposing her to icons like Teddy Pendergrass and Michael Jackson.

At 14, a free Deezer trial changed everything, introducing her to Tyler, The Creator and Amy Winehouse, inspiring her to create. Even though her GCSE music teacher wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about her creations, he left her with one lasting gift: Logic Pro. Lunchtimes became experiments. Sound became play and, as a burgeoning producer, she began taking the reins of her own destiny.

Those early sessions birthed singles Sunset Melody (2019), Blue Jay (2019), Like U (2021), and Foolish (2022), a jazz‑neo‑soul‑Afrobeat fusion that surpassed a million streams and landed her a support slot for FLO.

In September 2023, she released her debut EP Sorrow At Sunrise. And in 2025, she returned with EPs Feline’s Return and Feline’s Return Act II, graduated from UCL, toured with Mereba, Ravyn Lenae, and PinkPantheress, and earned praise from artists like Doechii and SZA.

When I ask the multihyphenate what 2025 taught her, she says: urgency. “Your future is the sum of your decisions in the present”. With Feline’s Return, she wanted to “give people a taste of what was really going on in my mind. As a woman, it’s easy for people to underestimate your capabilities”.

Her visual world mirrors her ambition. Drawing from Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Madonna, Dorothy Dandridge, and Janet Jackson – artists who used fashion as narrative – Natanya writes songs as if she is a character in a film: “I love music more than anything, but I love escapism too. I just love to tell stories!”

Those stories are shaped by transformation. In 2024, she went through quite a tumultuous one releasing standalone single Boombox, touring with Destin Conrad, losing label funding and grieving the death of a family member. “There’s no one size fits all” way to handle setbacks, she states, urging fans to “get out there and [fight]” for themselves. Even if your self-determination doesn’t resonate with anybody just yet, don’t listen to them. Keep clawing until you know you’re out of there. Remember your self-esteem”.

“Even if your self-determination doesn’t resonate with anybody just yet, don’t listen to them”

Her resilience is buoyed by community. “I’m grateful to have great friends, a family that I can trust despite our imperfections, and an incredible manager and team!”

Central to that team is JKARRI, her longtime co-producer. Their synergy shapes her eclectic catalogue. “There will be eras when you’re the expert and others where you really need to learn”.

She dreams of future collaborations as well, citing Oscar Sheller as a kindred innovator. And she still can’t believe the co-signs she has received from major artists. When SZA liked an Instagram video featuring her song On Ur Time, (where Natanya name drops the Kill Bill songstress in the lyrics) she was “shocked.” “Then Tyler [, The Creator] followed me. I cried in my kitchen for 2 hours… I really look up to them both”.

She speaks about SZA with reverence. “CTRL was honest to the tiniest detail”. She highlights the song Awkward, comparing its writing to Amy Winehouse: “The micro-concept of using intimacy to figure out if it’s just friends or more… That was gold to me”.Her own writing aims for that level of emotional anthropology. In her song Jezebel, she reimagines the biblical figure as a dazzling, conflicted woman chasing stardom.“I’ve always been both shy and flamboyant… When my music began to gain some recognition, I felt the pressure from everyone around me”.

Back at the piano, the word “Jezebel” arrived first. “I wondered how every woman who’s been labelled negatively got there… I wanted to mimic them all and show them how absurd their standards were”. Her favourite lyric – “Don’t hit me crying in the middle of the night / Just take the golden knife / I wish I had your life” – captures the envy, projection, and patriarchal judgment women face.

Looking ahead to 2026, she promises multidimensional storytelling that will both align and depart from her previous material, striving to leave a legacy as enduring as the artists who shaped her. She remembers spending days studying Michael Jackson videos and is determined to become a reference for a new generation of upstarts.

To her fans, she offers a poignant message: “Continue to be who you are. It doesn’t pay to fight against yourself. I love you all and I’m excited for the rest of the journey ”.