Namasenda’s ambition is unquenchable

It kicked off a decade ago, when her breakthrough EP hot_babe_93 caught hold of the underground’s ears in 2017 for its infectious, sugary bubblegum bass sensibilities when the hyperactive genre was at its apex. A few years later, she connected with PC Music’s A. G. Cook and released her mixtape Untitled Ammo on the label in 2021, an enlarged display of her energetic digital pop with a strong collaborative energy. With guests such as Oklou and Hannah Diamond appearing well before they’d be entrenched in the broader leftfield pop consciousness, Namasenda has always been ahead of the curve.

She may draw upon some familiar sounds, but it can’t be argued that she’s always seemed steadfast and assured in chasing a vision that is very much her own – her pristine, vocoded vox atop her glittery backdrops constitute her idiosyncratic reputation. It’s revealed to me that, at one point, that unabashed confidence wasn’t always necessarily so. “In my whole life, I’ve wanted so much, but I’ve been stuck in glue – just trying to get to a point where I feel like I’m where I want to be, but there have been so many obstacles,” Namasenda says.

Limbo, her debut album on local Stockholm imprint YEAR0001, is Namasenda feeding on this turmoil – the emotional pressure of a public-facing creative career and losing her grasp on it – to make her most remarkable, unapologetic, raw, and personal statement yet. Approaching her affliction head-on, she turns her insular woes into universal empowerment, her new songs the truest reflections of herself, serving a purpose greater than satisfying the party. “I felt I was in a place where I wasn’t happy about where I was,” Namasenda says about her headspace before writing Limbo. “I’ve always, always wanted more every time I do something, as I’m never satisfied. I just left PC Music and was like, ‘Okay, what do I do? How do I move forward?’” The solution was simple: Get back in the studio. Do the work. Make the music. See what happens.

An album was “the goal,” but Namasenda admits “she didn’t know what it was going to turn into” at first. At a lean 11 songs and half-hour length, Limbo is a sugar hit of dancefloor euphoria – her most supercharged at once – with many still left on the cutting room floor for the future. “We just felt what songs were the right songs for the album,” she tells me. Following and trusting instinct informs the entire record, down to Namasenda’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics and her collaboration with Swedish songwriter/producer duo Medium, comprising Hannes Roovers and Isac Hördegård.

For some artists, being entirely engrossed in a project for an exhaustive time can lead to internal conflict. “When you start something, you’re euphoric, and it’s like, ‘Great, this is the best thing I’ve ever heard,’” Namasenda explains. “But then I usually go into this bubble of, ‘This sucks,’ and then I come back again. That never happened with this project.” Medium’s readiness “to do the work” is what pushed Namasenda not to doubt Limbo’s “greatness,” and since she sought to “re-establish [herself] as an artist,” it’s clear why their partnership clicked. “They’re like, ‘Oh, you want to record this for the 10th time? Sure. Let’s do it.’ They love it. Just getting to try every single idea I had made me feel okay.”

So, everyone did the work. Some songs underwent radical transformations, such as the dawn-hours-ready breakbeat “Love Island”, the unsuspectingly experimental “Madonna”, and the rapidly undulating “Clermont Twins”, but their final forms are “the most perfect ones.” “We just knew when a song was done,” Namasenda offers. “I just felt it in my soul. During this process, I have grown so much as a musician and writer, and because most of the time it was just Medium and me – they’re very chill and such lovely people to work with – I felt I had the chance to be me and trust my instincts.” One track of many showing how daring Namasenda’s dance-pop has become is the effervescent lead single “Cola”, which treads new sonic ground by combining seismic bass thumps with looping guitar arpeggios.

She then adds, “The more you do something, the more confident you get. This time around, I was more alone in it. I never got any pushback either, so I think it just made that process so much easier for me.” Limbo thrives on Namasenda’s newfound spontaneity, its songs sprawling in maximalist ways her previous material didn’t. “Madonna” is deceivingly straightforward in its introduction of intoxicating synths, but the abrupt spoken word male hooks derailing her idolising choruses structurally put it right into off-kilter territory. “To me, it’s like the epitome of pop,” Namasenda raves about her tune. “It’s also the weirdest song to me. I wonder what I would think if I heard it in a playlist and I didn’t make it.”

Perhaps it would sound like it comes from the present; Namasenda, a PC Music alum, doesn’t like nostalgia. “It’s so not interesting to me. It already happened. Like, let’s move on. I want to be here.” PC Music’s synthetic pop, at one point bolder for its fresh surrealness, has, like other adjacent scenes such as hyperpop, been diluted since its accessible absorption into the mainstream. Even when first making her mark, her aversion to labelling her sound as “futuristic” was a constant, and understandably so – can such a sound be called that if many in the industry are revelling in it? “Maybe it is,” she resignedly suggests, “But I just want to be here right now, in the present, and let it happen, you know? Let me see what happens down the track.” Still, she recognises why people would look back, especially given today’s bleaker climate: “It’s very human, and very easy to be like, ‘Oh, 2016!’ It was so much fun.”

It’s this attitude of not looking back that took Namasenda to Limbo, clearly the project she’s most proud of, and doing otherwise would’ve stagnated both her ambition and herself. One of the album’s broader purposes was to regain control of her artistry by proving she is her own artist and not just a product of the label associations that got her to this point. For one, there are no features: “It needs to be me,” Namasenda says outright. Her heart was set on that very early on, when writing in January 2024. After persistently convincing her new label, this successful “clean slate” embodies the singular ambition she’s harnessed: “That’s also why the cover is white – it’s pure.”

Limbo also diverges from her sparser, sleek instrumentals with space for an afterglow, for ones that are louder, immediate, and pack a punch. “[Limbo] is more urgent because that’s the way I feel – I want more out of my life and my career. It felt like my dream was slipping through my fingers; I had to grab it and do something about it.” This makes the synth barrage of “Ultra Bomb” and its likening of romantic confession to atomic detonation, as well as the escalating pleasure of “Heaven” and its manifestation of becoming your absolute best, convey truly emotionally potent notions. Namasenda amusingly affirms so for the latter, but is also serious: “It’s kind of a looksmaxxing song, just manifesting who I’m going to be, what I’m going to look like. It makes me happy.”

This is where the empowerment sinks in: The pressure Namasenda faced, which catalysed Limbo’s creation, an album she describes “[happening] to [her], not by [her],” is largely absent. She’s staying in the present. She’s doing better than ever. She’s had her distance from those intense feelings. “And I’m happy that I have, and I feel like I’m going to perform this body of work without any sadness, just happiness.”

Now sharing a collection of material so consciously unfiltered and completely honouring her vision, is Namasenda finally where she ideally envisions herself? “I thought I would be further,” she laughs. “I thought I would have a Grammy by now!” But her ambition isn’t a joke, it’s the very thing that fuels her personhood: “I’ve always dreamt very, very, very big. That’s just who I am. It’s a part of me, and it’s not that I think that I am better than anyone else. I feel like if I can dream it, then obviously it’s possible.”

That may be at odds with her reiterated commitment to being in the now; after all, she’s trying to improve on exercising gratitude. “I have all these goals. I’m always thinking about what’s going to happen next year,” she says. “I’m already working on the album after this one. I just want to keep going, like, I’m over Limbo. Let’s keep it pushing.” Namasenda’s ambition may be insatiable, but following its boundlessness means her honest vulnerability doesn’t end here.

Limbo’s relentlessness comes to a halt on the spectacular lamenting closer “Alright”, where she sings about sacrificing parts of herself to make a fracturing relationship work – “Two times I’ve lied to you, but I … suppress my appetite to be your type” – as wailing synths emerge, bursting like her limitless ambition. Personal tension transformed into cathartic release. “I just wanted to show my inner life that’s more Naomi than Namasenda.” She’s not done manifesting her dream.