Annahstasia is ready to grow into the artist she was always meant to be

After spending her twenties travelling the world and having her career dictated by others, Nigerian-American singer-songwriter Annahstasia is finding her truest form as an artist on her new album, ‘Tether’ – in the city she has always called home.

Annahstasia dials in from her family home in Los Angeles, where creativity runs throughout the household and art covers the walls. Her parents – a Nigerian father and Midwestern mother – are LA-based fashion designers and visual artists, so eccentricity for Annahstasia was always encouraged from an early age. As a kid, she followed their work around the city, hopping from Koreatown, a neon-lit neighbourhood lined with Bourdain-approved barbecue spots, to the leafy San Fernando Valley suburbs, where she attended a Lutheran school. LA, with all its little quirks and contrasts, has always been home.

It’s mid-morning and she’s easing into the day from her room, half-sitting in her sun-soaked bed, surrounded by plants and dark mahogany furniture. Her voice is soft, but slightly worn from tour prep. Though she’s not feeling well, the husky rasp and long, thoughtful pauses between sentences only add to her laid-back Cali hippy aura. “I often write in my bed,” the songwriter says. “My guitar sits right by me. I’ll sit there in my little sun patch, and sometimes a song will come through.” 

For Annahstasia – full name Annahstasia Enuke – it’s important to take a deep breath and enjoy the quiet moments. For much of her twenties, moving around felt quite normal. She left LA behind, chasing the fast lane through Berlin, London and New York as a touring songwriter, visual artist and model.  During this time, she began writing the songs that would become her dreamy, folk-steeped debut album, Tether, released on drink sum wtr in June. In our 40-minute-or-so conversation, the singer shares that she’s finally ready to trade in her well-travelled suitcase for her favourite sage green sheets, and lean into a much slower pace of life.

For many artists, it’s unusual for their debut to land some 13 years after they first entered the industry. But for Annahstasia, it was the only way. At 17, she was signed to a record deal after being scouted singing outside her classroom, but the industry, as it often does, quickly packaged and shrink-wrapped her into something that never felt like herself. She returned independently and, in 2019, released her first solo project, Sacred Bull – a sultry, lusty trip-hop-infused R&B EP that earned her a spot opening for 90s bohemian rock god Lenny Kravitz on his Raise Vibration tour. Expanding on her early experiences, she says: “I’m so grateful to mature, because a lot of women in music don’t get the chance. They’re taken advantage of at such a young age, carted around the world and made into superstars. I know who I was at 21, and I was a child. I didn’t know myself as an artist yet.”

After having her earliest forays into music controlled by others, time has taught the singer the value of trusting her gut instinct. “I didn’t want to be the kind of artist who, years down the line, is confused. I always think: if today is my last day, what have I left behind, and does it represent me?” 

In 2022, she arrived in Berlin, a self-professed “nomad”; her best friend lived there, but an extended visit turned into something more permanent. Annahstasia pieces together her Berlin Pinterest board: journaling by the lake, strolling through Lietzenseepark, and grabbing egg and kimchi galettes every Wednesday at the Charlottenburg farmers’ market. “I need time to settle into a city and find a sense of routine in the community. Sometimes, there can be so much movement that you can forget to live in your own body,” she says. “[Los Angeles] is where my books are. It’s the only place where I have been every version of myself.”

It’s also where she chose to record her debut – at Valentine Studios in North Hollywood, a legendary studio not much changed since the mid-70s. It was recorded in just two weeks in March 2024, with the most intentional part – capturing her voice – planned in the months before. She and her engineer even tested different studio rooms, microphone setups and vocal-guitar combinations to get it absolutely right. “Most engineers struggle with the range my voice sits in,” she explains. “But [engineer] Jason Lader got it. He’s the only one who’s ever really captured what I think it should sound like.”

Annahstasia’s voice is certainly a rarity. It’s a deep, syrupy alto that wraps around you like the lingering scent of sandalwood, slipping in and out through the open tunings of her guitar strings. When I ask about her favourite tuning to play in, she answers: “I try and find a new one every six months or so, just to shake it up,” before listing off her current favourite from memory: “D, F-sharp, B, F-sharp, A, C-sharp.” 

On the album’s opener, Be Kind, she sings with heartfelt longing, “I deserve to rest/ In a California king bed/ With my arms outstretched.” Annahstasia smiles: “I chose less luxury for more stillness.” The lyrics are a snapshot of her early twenties, grappling with complicated friendships. Perhaps the key moment on the record, though, is the intimate duet with Nigerian Britain-based artist Obongjayar. Together, Annahstasia and Obongjayar’s verses on Slow whisper back and forth like steamy, finger-pencilled mirror notes left between lovers.

The two artists met in London after she DMed him on Instagram about a tiny gig she was booked to play for no more than “20 or 30 people max”. “I didn’t see him in the crowd and figured he couldn’t make it,” she recalls. “Then, literally five minutes before the last call at the bar, he shows up. I was like, ‘Dude, you missed the whole show!’ He said, ‘Sorry, I just broke up with my girlfriend.’”

They clicked instantly, spending three hours talking about music and their Nigerian roots until the bar had to kick them out. That week, he came over to her sublet to demo the song. “At first, I was ready to drop a bedroom recording of Slow, but Obongjayar told me to wait for the right moment to record it properly.” That opportunity came a year later, while recording Tether. With additional backing vocals provided by Ogi Ifediora – another Nigerian-American musician – Annahstasia wrote the track to be something powerful. “I wanted it to be a Nigerian trifecta,” she says. “And not Afrobeat – because, although I love Afrobeat, it’s really cool to see people from the Nigerian diaspora making music that exists outside of that genre bias.”

“I was often the only Black person [at school], and I was not Black in the American sense. I’m Nigerian.” She describes this as leaving her feeling “amorphous”, never quite fitting in while growing up. “It became a common theme through my young adulthood – trying to assimilate into Black culture but missing some of the references, and trying to connect with Nigerian culture, but missing a lot of the cues.” But recording and writing Tether helped. “My influences are in my bones. The way I sing, the way I throw my voice,” Annahstasia says. “I found similarities with folk singers from Yoruba and Igbo cultures. Nobody taught me that; it was just in my body.” 

Annahstasia has finally found her footing, with songs like Overflow skipping somewhere between folk and soul, carried by dainty piano and woodwind arrangements, and Believer grinning to an electric finale with a bluesy, Bon Iver-esque guitar riff. She now exists, untethered, like a slow morning after a wine-drunk date. In Unrest, Annahstasia’s voice tightens on a lush, finger-picked guitar line: “Why worry when/ your hands still feel my skin/ and our eyes still touch/ a little too much.” 

Tether is a tender reminder that softness isn’t a weakness and love – in its smallest, silliest moments – is still worth slowing down for. Annahstasia puts it perfectly: “We are born as love, but the rest of the world and our experiences harden us. It’s about trying to find a way to come back to our softness.”