Written while navigating 2020’s lockdown measures, Durban-born R&B singer Nanette’s debut album is an exercise in finding refuge in cathartic artistic expression. “I've always been a very soulful type of person,” she tells Apple Music. “I've always gravitated towards something that would make me just hold my chest and bare my sins.”
She does exactly that on Bad Weather, an emotional journey in which the naturally shy former law student Nanette Mbili transforms into the incredibly candid mononymous artist. With a love of music that began when she sang in her church’s choir, Nanette learned to fully embrace her musical leanings, inspired by the ’80s and ’90s R&B she was surrounded by as a child. She solidifies her soulful, reflective sonic palette across the album’s nine tracks, largely helmed by producer Lee Global.
“Since I was a child, I've always been scared of thunder and lightning,” Nanette explains. “I was an only child, and sometimes I'd be staying as this lonely child in the house alone [during a thunderstorm], scared as heck. That fear of being alone in a thunderstorm or a catastrophic event has never left. I always saw even the things that went wrong in my life as another thunderstorm. I wanted the album to feel like an account of me in my room with my blinds down, and it's pouring, and the thunder's crashing against the window. The album is a really tumultuous journey, because nothing about bad weather is peaceful.” Here, she breaks down key tracks from Bad Weather.
“Vent”
“I wanted to talk about the state of the dating pool right now. Why is everything so sexualised? So I was just upset that I felt like I was such a queen and I wasn't getting treated right. I also just had so many doubts about the path I was taking career-wise. I finished writing ’Vent’ as I was about to decide whether I was going to sign [to a label] or not. That last part of ‘Vent’ was really me praying and saying, 'I'm about to step into this journey. I don't know if I'm going to be great, or if it's going to shrivel me up and I fade away’, like I say in the song. But I'm about to step into this journey and I really pray I'm not doing the wrong thing. I pray I'm not selling my soul. We added the quartet to have those powerful strings in the background carrying the message of the song, carrying this message of the wallowing soul who's just eager to have someone hear her get this itch off her chest. Shout out to Lee for getting his dad, Themba Mkhize, who is a legendary and phenomenal composer and pianist. For me, it was a crazy moment to have such an iconic person in the jazz scene in South Africa and African music on my project.”
“Same Mistakes”
‘Same Mistakes’ is my favourite song on that album. I like to sing of the things I see. I had just been seeing, at the time, a pattern of dishonesty around me, from myself as well from other people. I was calling myself out as well, because I had been dishonest about some things in my life and dishonest to myself and other people at that time. There was so much that I'd been going through in my music journey that just kept on making me feel like, ‘Why is it never perfectly working out?’ It was just another way to avert my frustration and focus on another element of life that had been humbling me. It was just those mistakes that I made in life, and calling them out. I've made the same mistakes over and over. It's like, 'Why am I doing this?' Now, with these other people, I'm like, 'Who you really trying?' People can try me. I think I try not to be very responsive and I try to always take the route of calming down, giving people the benefit of the doubt. I didn't understand why I was always this easy victim, because I try to never treat people like that. I was just like, 'I don't understand why I keep getting tried.' You're given a life where the paths that you cross, you're going to encounter pain and suffering. But it's just like for some people, they just encounter such permanent and such unnecessary pain and suffering and disposition. Also, when you step into the varsity scenes of Black female students, you get a very specific experience of life, and because I've got that specific experience of life as a Black female student who is opinionated, who is very independent, I was humbled in a lot of respects. I was bound to make a lot of the mistakes that my parents told me to look out for that I ended up making e multiple times. ‘Same Mistakes’ was [written] in that chapter and saying, 'But after this, after you've cried about it, you're not making those mistakes anymore.' I feel like Same Mistakes and ‘The Nice Guy’, all of them are painting a narrative of the person I am and the person I’m trying to let go of, the push over.”
“The Nice Guy”
“‘The Nice Guy’ was really just about me now, specifically focusing on me as always being the nice guy, who always I felt picked on or villainised. I also wanted to be candid about the relationship that I've had within my family. When you reach adolescence, reshaping the relationship with your parents is a very, very interesting journey. It's not to say that I don't love my parents. I love my parents. I adore my parents. But it was just, I think, that my path to life turned out a bit less influenced by the family structure than anything, because it wasn’t a very traditional family structure. So this was like a diary entry. There's a part where I speak about I've been taken advantage of. As a woman, there's a very slim chance that you're not going to be abused. And it's very hard for a lot of women who are abused to get out of that cycle. When the person becomes the victim, and they are taken advantage of, they forget how to say ’stop’ because that one time that they did say ‘stop’, it wasn't listened to. So immediately, the brain will always tell itself, 'You cannot fight. You do not have the means.' Even if you fully do, it is such a traumatising thing. It’s sad that there are a lot of women who can relate to that. Out of the industry, it's sad that when they hear those lines, they might think of a similar incident, which is a sad reality. I really wanted to really delve into everything that was tumultuous.”
“mama’s boy”
“When I say ‘mama's boys’, I'm not saying don't go love your mom. I'm not saying don't respect your mom or anything. A mama's boy—I mean the type who will completely disregard their partner whenever it comes to their mother even if there is reason to take your partner's side, even if you know your mama whylin’. Sometimes people are going to be wrong, and sometimes it's your mama. But if you're not going to step up for me and show up for me as my partner like you said you would, you're a mama's boy. I'm not about to fight with somebody's mother for attention because I respect your mother, too.”
“Good Girl Gone Sad”
“At some point in my life, I just chose to move to rebellion because I was just crying out. The hook came to me because it just felt like as girls, and as specifically nice girls, it's almost like you're handed a set of rules before you're even a certain age that you have to adhere to. ‘Girls can't be too chatty. You can't be too snapback-y. You can't be too angry. You can't be too loud. You have to always comfort other people. You have to be kind. You have to be nurturing’, and all of this stuff. I was almost saying, 'I see this and I see what a good girl is, but I'm fed up and I'm saying if you want me to be a good girl, okay, I'm going to be a good girl gone sad because I'm living this lie. I'm tired of living a lie. It was almost me ending the sentence, this very long sentence with saying, 'I am throwing in the towel because this thunderstorm is getting to me. I have a really tough decision to make. Am I going to let these mental afflictions that I have take me or am I going to let them take me to the next phase of my life’, because I sort of expected that I will always deal with the things that I deal with mentally. During my first year of law, I failed my law modules. I passed my first semester with flying colours. Second semester came, and one of my close friends passed away. That paused my entire academic year for me. I ended up failing my final exams. I think I slumped. I got into a very deep place, especially because the last time we had spoken and the last time we were on good terms, it was a case of we both were very sad people. So we both promised each other, 'Dude, we're going to stay for each other.’ That was my first very, very painful experience of grief. His passing was definitely the catalyst for how much pain was put into that song. I was doing first year of law again and I just realised that I hated what I was doing. I hated my life. I couldn't find anything to find contentment from. It was like, 'What am I doing? I'm failing. What is going on? What is going wrong?' I clearly am not a good girl. I clearly am doing this all alone.”