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She Dropped a Freestyle and Went Back to Watching Anime
Nanette doesn’t need the moment. That’s exactly why the moment is hers.
The word freestyle gets thrown around so casually in music that it’s almost lost its meaning. We call things freestyles when they’re actually heavily produced singles wearing a loose outfit. But Ask For Nun dropped quietly on Friday, June 12 feels like the real thing. Not because it sounds unfinished. Because it sounds unguarded. And for Nanette, those are two very different things.
This is an artist who, by her own admission, goes home after interviews and watches anime. Who gives you everything in the music, specifically so she doesn’t have to give it to anyone else. Who sat in a Braamfontein salon getting her hair done mid-interview and still managed to say more meaningful things about artistry than most people communicate in an entire press cycle. When someone like that calls something a freestyle, they’re not telling you about the production process. They’re telling you about the state of mind.
The Double Meaning Nobody’s Talking About
Everyone hears Ask For Nun as “asking for nothing.” And yes, that’s there. The liberation of needing nothing from nobody. But sit with the spelling a little longer. Nun. There’s something almost spiritual in that choice, intentional or not. A nun gives up everything worldly. Detaches from desire, from validation, from the noise. What Nanette is describing is this stripped-back, unfiltered offering she’s putting out as the lead single to her Painfully Happy deluxe, which carries that same energy of renunciation.
She’s not performing freedom. She’s actually free. And the difference is audible.
The Deluxe Nobody Expected, Which Is Exactly Why It Matters
Painfully Happy was already a complete statement. Twelve songs built out of grief and joy living in the same body at the same time, her aunt’s passing folded into what should have been the happiest chapter of her career so far. Most artists would leave that alone. Seal it up. Move on to the next project.
Nanette is adding five more rooms to that house instead.
That choice says something specific: she’s not done processing. Or maybe she is done processing, and these five songs are what the other side sounds like. Either way, Ask For Nun as the opener raw, freestyle, needing nothing, suggests the deluxe isn’t going to soften what came before. It’s going to push further into it.
A Career Built in the Margins That the Industry Eventually Had to Notice
Here’s what gets overlooked in the Nanette story: she didn’t get a co-sign and then build a fanbase. She built the fanbase, and then the co-signs followed. Fool Me and Imfula on Kelvin Momo’s Amukelani both hit number one, not because a machine pushed them, but because people found them and told other people. Spotify’s Ones to Watch. Apple Music’s ALPHA campaign. The WAV Festival stage. Opening for Ella Mai at the GrandWest Grand Arena in Cape Town, her first arena, by the way, which she walked into because people in the industry advocated for her to be there.
Nobody handed her the room. They just eventually had to stop pretending she didn’t deserve it.
Ask For Nun exists in that context. It’s not the sound of someone trying to prove something. It’s the sound of someone who proved it already and is now free to just make music they actually want to make.
What She Said That Every Young Artist Needs to Hear
She doesn’t do inspirational speeches. She’s not that kind of artist. But there’s a quote from her Mail & Guardian interview earlier this year that lands differently when you hear Ask For Nun afterward:
“A lot of the time we want to show up and have people see that but often no one’s going to give you the credit for still showing up on your worst day. But you still have to do it.”
She dropped Ask For Nun on a Friday. No spectacle. No campaign rollout that required you to decode a riddle. Just a freestyle from a 24-year-old Durban-born, Xhosa songwriter who has been showing up on her worst days too since 2022. And then she probably went home and watched anime.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
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