Five years ago in 2020, this magazine reviewed “Honey Coloured”, the very impressive debut album from 18-year-old Nyah Grace, the gifted Manchester via Oregon soul singer who we tipped for future success way before other media and taste makers first discovered her.
It has been a very long wait for her sophomore album, “Divinely Devoted” which dropped on 20th June 2025 via Palawan Productions and pushes Nyah much closer to the mainstream breakthrough her talent deserves.
London’s Jazz Café was packed last Sunday (July 6th) when Nyah delivered a faultless performance as part of the Global Soul Showcase. Many of her own fans were there and she won a rousing welcome and loud applause for her sizzling soulful set, backed by a very decent house band.
* Our man with the camera Liam Battersby was there to shoot an exclusive portrait session with Nyah and some super live shots.
The new LP birthed fan fave cuts such as her latest single “Down”, which has reached # four in the Music Week Black Music Chart and is still climbing. Her songs of “sassy and confessional r&b” have hit the airwaves of BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra and BBC6Music as well as receiving major playlisting support. The album was featured in NPR’s ‘Best R&B Albums Of The Week’.
Other tracks to listen out for are the superb, “Only Mine” and “Back Of The Cab”. Co-written and produced with De’Jour Thomas (Chlöe, Fousheé, Monaleo) the tracks on “Divinely Devoted” spins in a new direction from the slower-paced ballad-heavy debut album.
Intimate and concise at just 31 minutes in duration, the new album’s 10 songs came together in a burst of creativity, following an exploratory two-day studio session in L.A. last August. “I’d heard some of De’Jour’s other stuff before, but we went in pretty blind. We didn’t really know how we were gonna work together.”
That recording session and Nyah’s trust in the process, set the tone for what followed at subsequent sessions in London, the pair regularly completing a song from scratch each day. “It all happened super quick. He’s got such an ear, musically, and for some reason we both knew exactly what the album was supposed to sound like.”
When Nyah and her producer first started writing it was for an EP, but they were writing so much that it developed into an album, such was the chemistry between them as songwriting partners.
That creative synergy can be heard across the Lauryn Hill-styled opener “Back Of The Cab” as Nyah relates the tale of slightly tipsy, tearful female passenger “venting to the Uber driver about the shitty night she’s just had.”
That sense of innovation extends into “Fall Into You”, as a voicemail from Nyah’s mother comes through with some reassuring maternal advice. “I was going through something really, really bad at the time,” Nyah explains, “and I was just having one of those moments calling my Mum every day, trying to figure out what was going on.
“It’s funny because it sounds like it’s rehearsed or planned, but it wasn’t. My mum always knows the right thing to say.”
De’Jour’s stripped-down productions accentuate the purity of her sensuous delivery, helping “Divinely Devoted” stand proud alongside defining releases from neo-soul greats such as Erykah Badu, India.Arie and Jill Scott.
Nyah Grace grew up on her grandparents’ farm in rural Oregon, with lots of animals and wide-open spaces. As a child, she wanted to be Selena Gomez or Taylor Swift, but discovering Billie Holiday and Alicia Keys in her early teens changed that.
Shutting herself away in the farm’s basement, she taught herself piano and guitar via Youtube tutorials, and she began to write songs, and then learned a computer recording programme to transform those ideas into demos. She asked for singing lessons when she was six, but she was too young to get a tutor, so a little later she began lessons until she was a teenager.
At 13 she found and fell in love with jazz; Billie Holiday in fact, via her great aunt Michelle, who sang with Chic and The System. Nyah also soaked up her mum’s eighties music, and her dad’s love of early rap, plus plenty of r&b. She began to enter talent shows and sang Alicia Keys songs.
Nyah was so serious about her craft that at 14 she enrolled on a collaborative, month-long song-writing camp. “It was the best. One day I wrote a song called ‘Don’t Wake Me’ and the teacher loved it. He was like ‘You need to record this. This is amazing.’” True to his word, he put Nyah in touch with a producer friend with a studio in McMinnville, a 40-minute drive from her home, where all three recorded it.
That demo eventually filtered down to veteran British music manager John Campbell (Shakespears Sister, Wyclef Jean, Robin Gibb), who instantly flew to Oregon to sign Nyah to his Palawan Productions imprint.
At John Campbell’s insistence, Nyah subsequently moved to Manchester, following an initial visit aged 15. “I absolutely fell in love with it. I fell in love with the culture, fell in love with the fact that I could just gig anywhere, and that people were really receptive. To me it’s always felt like home. I’ve always felt British in my heart.”
To prove it, Nyah moved permanently to the UK in 2018, finishing her formal schooling and completing her debut at the same time. Cooked up alongside Grammy-nominated Steve Chrisanthou (Corinne Bailey Rae, Lianne La Havas) and Michael Kwesi Graves, 2020’s “Honey-Coloured” peaked with whip-smart Corinne Bailey Rae duet “My Sista Told Me”, and racked up more than 12 million streams.
“I’m more mature,” says Nyah of the yawning chasm between her two albums. “When I think back to the first album, I just can’t believe how young I was. I was 16/17 when I started writing it, and 18 when it was released. It genuinely feels like a lifetime ago. I’ve been able to find my footing since and find out what I really love.”
She is now desperate to take the songs from “Divinely Devoted” on the road, just as soon as she completes her finals at the Royal Northern College of Music.
After hearing the smashing new album and from the impact of her fabulous live set in London a few nights ago, and while fully appreciating Nyah’s maturity and development as a songwriter across these last five years since the debut LP, it is crystal clear that she is much closer to becoming a fully formed artist, and is now far more than just a singer.
Music Republic Magazine first said it circa 60 months ago, and can find no valid reason to change our mind; Nyah Grace is on her way to a big career; with the right people around her and a continued admirable determination and focus. Go, go, go Ms. Grace…
Photos by Liam Battersby * [Except the two album cover images]
Words by Steve Best
