Aisha Badru is an airy voice with lyrics full of raw emotion, soul, and passion. The American songstress originates from Yonkers, New York, and attributes her home city for her late entry into the creative space. “I think New York in general kinda makes you a hard person … for the first half of my life, up until high school I was not a creative person, I wasn’t open, I wasn’t vulnerable”.
It wasn’t until college that Aisha began to feel more comfortable with her vulnerability and began performing at open mics across New York, despite not leaving the city she was able to grow within it and gained confidence and comfortability within herself while sharing her stories and emotions through her music at various open mics, before that “You wouldn’t be able to tell how I was feeling, what I was thinking, just because New York kind of makes you tough”.
While college was a time when Aisha took steps to follow her passion for music, it was her actions before attending college that may make you double-think whether or not it was music that she wanted to follow, with the soulful songstress passing on a music scholarship when leaving high school,” I went to the campus to go visit and I just didn’t feel like it was a good fit”. The decision to an onlooker may seem like a crazy one but for Aisha, there has been no regrets “Honestly I’m so grateful because of that because I feel like you can learn the technicalities of how to write music but I feel because I didn’t accept that scholarship it allowed me to really dive into the creative aspect of music and not so much the technical side”. Aisha’s music is raw and emotive, it offers a playlist of self-reflection and growth, and these are the aspects of Aisha’s work that she holds the highest. “I feel my strength is the emotion and lyricism”, while she didn’t take on the music scholarship it ultimately allowed her to work on the aspects of her music that she truly cared about, if the decision to attend college was to change and Aisha focused on the technicalities of music the Aisha Badru we know of now may not be the same artist whose lyrics filled with vulnerability and honesty draw you in.
Growing up in America during the 90s Aisha notes mainstream pop stars such as Destiny Child and Christina Aguilera as the main influences in her early years, ”Pop music is very big in the U.S music scene, I would say that inspired me to make my music simplistic, but then I also love to integrate these very complex feeling and topics into my music”, the feelings and vivid lyricism that flows through Aisha’s music come from her fandom for artists such as Frank Ocean and Jhene Aiko whose pens and imagery are massive influences on the poetic, emotive but still simple music Aisha creates.
While Aisha is a proud Yonkers native, raised in and by New York, the concrete jungle ultimately wasn’t the surrounding that suited her. The songstress moved to Orlando Florida to create her own utopia, “I saw there was a growing movement in central Florida of people growing their own food and just getting back to nature and medicinal herbs”. The move to Orlando allowed Aisha to live a life better suited not only for her but for the young family she is raising. Her love for nature was the catalyst for her move and allowed her to build a following separate from her music with her Instagram feed full of natural remedies and medicinal herbs.
“We live in such an interconnected world, especially now it’s become more obvious with the internet… I do think it’s important for me in particular to share some of these other things I’ve learned along the journey because I’m not just here to talk about love but it’s all connected”. Aisha understands the importance of using her platform to spread messages that don’t solely revolve around her music. Her 2021 project ‘The Way Back Home’ was released alongside environmental charity One tree planted, with every pre-save and pre-sale of the project equating to the charity planting one tree.
Aisha took a break last year with no releases throughout 2022, “As artists, there’s definitely a demand to keep putting out music, keep engaging, but the whole point of being an artist is to be able to have experiences … I didn’t release music at that time because I was still writing, still living”. Aisha used 2022 to live and gain experiences but now returns with her new EP ‘Learning to love again’ set to release on the 2nd of June this year, Aisha’s break from music is now over and she is ready to share what she has learned from her alternative way of living, experimenting with psychedelics, living a self-sufficient lifestyle and learning to love again. When talking about the project she shared, “I think it’s very related to my personal journey, just like being really hurt in the past, being in a new relationship but feeling like I’m not totally invested because there are still past wounds… I think it’s a universal concept of returning back to love, what it means to be human, and what it means to be interconnected. We’re all here learning how to love”.
The highly talented songstress is not just a singer with a beautifully airy voice who is effortlessly vulnerable and open with her audience, she is an artist with her hands in different pots not just focused on music but in her own words “I think I’m a walking poster of alternative health” as she teaches those who are willing to listen to alternative ways to heal and live through her music as well as her alternative lifestyle.
As Aisha prepares for her EP release on the 2nd of June, she is gifting listeners with a number of singles from the upcoming project, her new single ‘Path of least resistance‘ is available to listen to here:
