Who Is The French Singer at The Olympics? Meet Aya Nakamura

Nakamura is a multi-platinum-selling pop star with 25 top ten singles in France, and more than 20 million followers on social media, The New York Times reported. Her songs have been streamed seven billion times, and last year she made history when she sold out three Paris concerts in just 15 minutes, according to The Guardian.

One of her most popular songs, “Pookie,” is a version of the slang-word poucave, which comes from the Romani language for “traitor” or “rat.”

But Nakamura is best known for her song “Djadja” that hit the airwaves in 2018 and became a number-one hit in France. The song has been streamed about one billion times, The New York Times said.

In the anthem for female empowerment, she sings, “I’m not your catin,” which is a centuries-old French term for “prostitute.”

“A ‘djadja’ is basically a guy spreading false rumors about a girl he couldn’t sleep with,” she told Dazed. “It’s my story.”

She added that she created the term “djadja.”

“The name itself does not mean anything,” she said in an interview with Dazed. “I could have picked any random name. I invented the term ‘djadja’ to refer to a guy I looked up to…and was eventually disappointed in. Unfortunately, people too often believe the man’s side of the story. Why should we assume the girls are mythomaniacs? It’s also about an upfront girl who tells it like it is.”

The song has become an anthem for feminist protests, and the lyrics have been woven into chants and signs.

“Seeing my face on banners during feminist protests was very reassuring in the sense that I realized there were many women like me,” Nakamura said to Dazed.

The song was so popular across Europe, Nakamura became the first French female artist to top the Dutch charts since Edith Piaf in 1961, according to Hype magazine.

She won big at France’s Les Flammes awards for rap, R&B and pop in April 2024, taking home female artist of the year, pop album of the year and international star of the year, and dedicated her awards to “all black women.”

“I’m very honored because being a black artist and coming from the banlieue is very difficult,” she said at the awards, The Guardian reported. (While banlieue technically just means “suburb” in France, it is usually used to connote immigrant neighborhoods on the outskirts of Paris that are economically disenfranchised.)