“I’ve always been the underdog, and I’ve always respected the underdog, and I just didn’t think I’d be the underdog for this long,” Nemah Hasan, the artist known as Nemahsis, tells Rolling Stone in the latest episode of The Breakdown. In an emotional pause, she adds: “I’m just gonna take a moment. I’m so sensitive. I’m such a Pisces.”
In early October of last year, Nemahsis had flown to Los Angeles and signed a record deal. A few days later on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel, marking the beginning of a brutal war between Israel and Hamas. Shortly after, Nemahsis was dropped from her label.
“A year ago, I was in a situation where I had an album that every label was like fighting over,” she says, looking back at that time. “If I wanted a session with anyone I could most likely get it. It was like the easiest thing, because my talent, my music, spoke for more than what I look like and stuff. I didn’t want to do it alone, but I realized that it’s what was meant to happen. I think with this album, it no longer was mine, but it was more of a stance, I was making by releasing it and persevering.”
Nemahsis also credits fellow Canadian and producer 40 for helping her and comping his work during this time. “When I was dropped by my label in October, he saw that, and then reached out and was like, ‘If you ever need anything from me, I’m extending my my studio, myself, my craft, my engineer, whatever you need,’” she says. “Not only was I getting like the assistance of someone mixing my album so that I didn’t have to worry about that financially, but I was getting like the best person in the industry to do it.”
When discussing her single “coloured concrete,” Nemahsis shares insight into the inspiration behind the song, which happened after she rented an Airbnb “on a whim.” The singer recalls walking up the flight of stairs, opening the door to a room, and how her “jaw dropped, because I was like, this looks like my middle school — like, the bedroom that I didn’t have.”
She recalls how growing up her family wasn’t “very comfortable financially” and how “we had mold under the carpets.” Although they didn’t have enough money for new flooring, her mother came up with an idea. “My mom knew she had to get rid of the mold, so to kind of distract us, she told us we can paint the concrete floors whatever color we wanted,” she says, recounting how even though her mother said her father would come into money and that they should start planning their bedrooms at the time, the money never came. Fast forward to standing in that Airbnb, Nemahsis pulled out her notes app and “started writing what it felt like to experience that as an adult.”
The artist also shares how behind-the-scenes, “I just hate being heavy.” She adds, “I think everything about my image and my sound is so serious and as much as I try to let go of that and forget it, the world won’t let me. I want to just be a girl that can write songs about like love … but I just can’t. Not because I literally can’t. It’s that, the world expects more of me I think.”
Her debut album Verbathim is set to arrive on Sept. 13, 2024. On social media, she writes: “With the most turbulence and misfortune handed to me, i’m finally embracing the bad luck by releasing on the most unlucky day of the year.” The LP if fully independent and funded by the Palestinian artist herself.
“I had to free myself from this mind, this mindset of, like, scarcity, and having it control my life, or else this album would have never come out,” she adds. “I literally just used my savings entirely, and everything I’ve made over the last two years, and I put it right back into this project.
“I think younger me would be proud of this this album, and just betting on myself,” she continues. “Even if this is my last album, or if I never make something again, at least I did it, 100 percent, and I don’t know that most artists could could say that they did that.”