The FADER’s longstanding GEN F series profiles the emerging artists you need to know right now.

Natanya’s dreams stretch beyond the edges of her own world. “I want to be a messenger,” she says casually, but confidently, while biting into her sandwich. “There are going to be girls in 15 years who will say that they made music because of me. I truly believe that. I know this because I’m not afraid to be myself.”

The 23-year-old North West Londoner is siting at the coffee shop table with an assured posture and a focused mind. In an era of music when everybody wants to make it big, genres blur, and authenticity is a currency, it’s important to have creative confidence, but also a calculated direction, she argues. As a self-described go-getter, Natanya is no stranger to carving out success on her own terms — and embraces her natural changes in life and uses this to create storylines and build worlds in her music. “My mind sees things as chapters and concepts,” she explains, saying that she uses each of her projects to timestamp her life. The results were her EPs, Sorrow and Sunrise, Feline’s Return, and Feline’s Return Act II — all of which blend alternative R&B, indie pop, and ambient textures. She uses music to open up about her emotions, and she favors sparse production, punchy percussion, gentle synth layers, and her signature soft vocals.

“I like to create a legacy with each of my projects, because they do define who you are at that point,” she says. Her most recent offerings, Feline’s Return, released in June 2025, and Feline’s Return Act II, released in October 2025, saw Natanya fully step into the character of a sleek, black cat. Tracks across these EPs take sounds from brash, sleazy indie but also from bouncy jersey club. “I’ve always been told by my friends that I’m very catlike,” she explains. “People think that black cats have an automatic association with bad luck, but I think it’s the opposite. They’re splendid, beautiful, and clever.”

Sticking true to who she is and how she feels meant that she’s already captured the attention of artists like Doechii, Janet Jackson, and SZA online — and has toured with FLO, PinkPantheress, Destin Conrad, Mereba, and Ravyn Lenae. So how did an artist from North London catch global attention? “I think people can just tell when someone’s art is reflective of who they are, and I think people appreciate that,” she says.

Born Natanya Popoola, she was raised in a house filled with music and joy and grew up to the sounds of Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, and Destiny’s Child. Later, she began listening to the likes of Paramore and Tyler, The Creator when she started discovering music on the internet. As a teenager, she attended the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy on weekends and learned music production at school. Growing up, she was a big feeler, hard worker, and had a bubbly personality.

“I’d go to school and joke around in chemistry class but would then go home and write poems and songs,” she says. “I’d always surprise teachers who thought I wouldn’t do well because I was so chatty in class, but … I would go home and study all night and get the A*” — the highest grade possible in the U.K.

She credits one of her English teachers, who “looked like Kate Bush,” for being one of the first people to believe in her and her artistic spirit and indirectly having an impact on her musical career. Natanya then went to university to study English literature, a subject she feels passionately about due to its multidisciplinarity. “It’s politics, it’s ancient history, it’s art, all at once,” she says with a glimmer in her eye. “I love things that have multiple sides and combine lots of things.”

This much is evident in her music, which, at the time, she would make in the evenings after her lectures and before writing her essays overnight. Her 2023 EP Sorrow At Sunrise explores coming of age in a tumultuous time through eclectic, polymorphous sonics that blended all of her favorite aspects of R&B, jazz, soul, and pop.

Before arriving for this interview, Natanya spent her morning in meetings to prepare for the release of her upcoming single “DON’T ASK!” The track, she says, is “expansive”, and shows the true depth of her musical ability. The lyrics deal with the empowering feeling that comes with no longer asking for the minimum in a romantic situation. “I’m singing my heart out,” she laughs. “For the first time I’m taking ownership of myself and not obsessing over a guy and trying to make him like me or being angry that he’s not. This song’s message is that it’s his turn to come to me this time.”

As she hones in on the sound of her next project — she’s been listening to the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Aaliyah, and Gwen Stefani — her focus is learning what it means to grow out of girlhood and become a woman. “My priority is learning how to be a lady,” she says, before letting out a playful laugh. In order to do this, she’s trying to put more trust in her intuition.

“I do this thing in my diaries where I get to the last two pages and then I never finish them. I just stop, I start ghosting my diary. Then I buy [a new notebook] and all of a sudden I have all sorts of inspiration; I have things to say. I have eras in the same way. Sometimes I realise that the way I’ve been conducting myself or seeing myself for a year or whatever time period, there will come a point where I don’t know how to express myself in that medium anymore. But then I realize that it’s because I need to step into something new. I really embrace the need to change and grow, both in my art and in my life.”

And what will she do with the knowledge she gains from stepping into womanhood? Natanya wants to create a “generational” legacy, one where she can act as a source of inspiration to budding musicians. “I’ll [get there] by having as many experiences as I can. I know I’m not there yet but I’m on my way.”

Additional credits:
Lighting by Oliver Matich