Album Review: Aya Nakamura, ‘DNK’

Arguably the preeminent star of the Francophone pop world, Aya Nakamura is one of the world’s biggest music artists despite never setting foot in the United States (as per a February 2023 NPR interview). Her last album, 2020’s Aya, spawned five consecutive Top 10 hits in France and garnered hundreds of millions of streams. For DNK, her latest record and fourth studio album, Aya calls on Zouk and reggaeton to inject a summery flavor into her tedious explorations of love and sex.

With fifteen tracks and a runtime of 42 minutes, DNK is simply too long for how limited its scope is both thematically and lyrically. The record tracks Aya’s journey through coming to terms with a relationship that does not truly serve her best interests. DNK begins with “Corazon,” a sleek mélange of Caribbean rhythms that provides a smart contrast to the gloomy lyrics. “J'ai prié, demandé pour t'garder dans ma life (I prayed, begged to keep you in my life) / C'était toi que j'voulais aimer (You're the one I wanted to love) / Moi, j't'attends encore (I'm still waiting for you),” she croons in the song’s first verse. This back-and-forth energy — Aya’s heart is torn between her want for the relationship to work and her underlying knowledge that she’s better off moving on — is where most of the album’s tension lies, but the songwriting is too rudimentary to make that tension interesting for the record’s entire duration. Thus, the middle of the album is ultimately disposable, no matter how easy on the ears those melodies are.

“Baby,” the album’s second single, features a bouncy guitar loop that’s as playful as the early stages of a crush. “Daddy,” which initially reads as a companion to “Baby,” pulls off an admirable hat trick. Here, Aya flips the script on a run-of-the-mill sex jam and turns the song into a documentation of the pivotal moments that trigger a relationship’s demise. She ignores her man’s attempts at gaslighting with lyrics like “Faut pas te fâcher parce que j'te dis la vérité (Don't get mad because I'm telling the truth) / Tu m'as fait du mal, il fallait juste te rattraper (Han) mais le temps (You hurt me, you just had to make it up to me).” SDM plays his character of the deceptive boyfriend well, adding different textures and colors to an album that needs it more than it may think. The three other guest artists on DNK also pull their weight. Myke Towers gives “Tous les jours” some edge, Zouk icon Kim juxtaposes her bright tone against Aya’s darker delivery on “Chacun,” and Tiakola shows off some surprisingly great chemistry with Aya on the endlessly fun “Cadeau.”

By the time DNK reaches its final two songs — “Bloqué” and “Fin” — Aya (thankfully) understands that she can’t fix a broken man and that it’s time for her to move forward on her own. DNK is solid pop music; the hooks are catchy, the melodies are earworms, and Aya is effortlessly cool, there just isn’t enough lyrical depth to justify fifteen songs about the same general topic. Filler aside, DNK is another solid offering from Aya Nakamura and a reminder of the consistent global influence of Caribbean music.

Key Tracks: “Daddy” | “J’ai mal” | “Cadeau” | “Le goût” | “Beleck”

Score: 66