Nia Smith is caught between her ambition to speed up and her desire for a break. It’s been two years since the release of the British soul star’s debut EP ‘Give Up The Fear’ and, while the rollout itself was “pretty chill”, life has felt non-stop ever since.
While her first single, the EP’s soulful and resilient title-track, was a perfect introduction to Smith as an artist, it was her collaboration with Jamaican dancehall superstar Popcaan on the remix of her track ‘Personal’ that really blew things up. In the aftermath, she’s been nominated for the Rising Star award at the 2025 Ivor Novellos Award and Best Newcomer at the 2026 MOBOs. She’s ticked off Later… With Jools Holland and performing at Glastonbury, and more recently, appearing at Milan Fashion Week via an invitation from Prada.
“I’m kind of exhausted at the moment,” says the Brixton native, speaking to NME from her hometown. “I feel like I’ve been working loads, but I’ve been keeping the right people around me to make sure I’m grounded and making time for myself.”
You can sense the work that Smith has been putting into her craft in her latest EP, ‘Payback Is A Dog’, which arrived last week. The record marks a poignant step up for the former BRIT School and ELAM alumni, who had her first brush with nebulous fame performing covers on TikTok. While ‘Give Up The Fear’ had Smith learning the ropes of the music industry and finding her feet in the studio, this time around, she gave herself a lot more room to breathe.
Smith describes the creation of ‘Payback As A Dog’ as “free-spirited”. Where she locked in with Grammy-winning producer and Sam Smith collaborator Jimmy Naples for ‘Give Up The Fear’, here she opened herself up to the idea of “making music with whoever”. She resurfaced ideas with Don Valentino, whom she worked with on ‘Personal’, and threw herself into the deep end of songwriting camps. “I hate working with strangers,” she says, deadpan, but getting out of her comfort zone paid off; she gained three songs for the EP, including lead single, ‘Tough’.
Opening with gentle keys and soft guitar noodling, ‘Tough’ slowly swells to earnest echelons. Featuring the smooth, dulcet tones of Floridian talent Destin Conrad, the track speaks of the toxic pressures of archetypal masculinity, and the often self-imposed behaviours men internalise to fit that standard. Smith was so struck by the topic that she felt compelled to write about it.
“With ‘Tough’, I walked in [to the session] and was like ‘I find it interesting that my male friends don’t cry as much as my female friends, and they’re not in their feels as much’,” she recalls. “I feel like men struggle in silence sometimes with their mental health.”
Authenticity – in relationships, songwriting, life – is a priority for Smith. However, as a highly private person, the intimacy of the songwriting process can sometimes feel a bit uncomfortable. “I don’t really like to air my life, [or] everyone’s business,” she shares. “It’s why I pivoted with ‘Tough’. I wanted to write about men opening up [because] I’m not going to write about me, I’m not going to write about my friend – I’m going to write about a more universal situation that I can also relate to and that I visually see in my life.”
“I don’t really like to air my life, [or] everyone’s business […] I’m going to write about a more universal situation that I can also relate to”
Even though Smith tries her best to err towards a somewhat mysterious ambiguity with her lyrics, as a collection, ‘Payback Is A Dog’ feels far more reflective than ‘Give Up The Fear’, and marks a new era where cycles close, and new possibilities unfurl in the space left in their wake. In the EP, she recounts impactful changes in her life, but emphasises that while the songs do speak of a friendship break-up, a relationship breakdown, and changing cities, they call more to “tying up the knots of the seven stages of grief” and “all the feelings” that come “before, after, [and] in-between”.
A sample of the Stylistics’ ‘Payback Is A Dog’ introduces the EP with rage, but, by the project’s end, Smith wants listeners to be “feeling a little bit more hopeful”. ‘Limit’, incorporating a sample of James Blake’s cover of Feist’s ‘Limit To Your Love’, captures the arc of rediscovering your individual power with a pep in your step after a time of second-guessing your emotions.
Smith is also stretching herself sonically while trying to put positive twists to challenging times. ‘Stuntin’ and ‘Hope In Us’ are bouncy and carefree, despite the palpable irritation (“Lately I’ve been feeling every kind of way since you’ve been moving mad”, she quips in the latter); meanwhile, ‘Get My Get Back’ switches the code to slow jam R&B packed with ’90s tropes and accusations of cheating.
Despite the tone, resentment is absent. “I don’t want to be in a place where I’m making really angry, negative music,” Smith says, and she’s taking measures to make sure she’s processing her emotions through other means to avoid reimmersing herself in bad feelings every time she performs. “I want to make sure that I’m pouring it out in many ways, whether it’s through therapy or through friends, so as not to make that song like ‘I hate this person’.”
Does Smith believe in what goes around comes around? She ponders the question: “I don’t know if I believe in karma. I don’t necessarily believe in, no pun intended, get my get back. I believe God will reveal all, so I don’t really need to fight the battle when he’ll do it for me.”
These closed chapters, while often hopeful, can still come with a sense of mourning. ‘High’ especially embodies this bittersweet experience. “I’m so scared to walk alone / I watered us so we can grow”, Smith sings, ultimately choosing to walk away from a connection despite the energy invested. “Sometimes new things can feel really scary – the grass isn’t always greener,” she explains. Delicate guitar and strings give the track a whimsical aura which lets Smith stretch her vocal as well as her creativity with its dreamy atmospherics. “I wanted to feel like you were floating on a cloud.”
Back on Earth and with a week to go until her birthday, Smith is looking forward to a break in the countryside to touch grass, both literally and metaphorically. In the past year, among the whirlwind of activity around her, she’s grown both as an artist and as a person, and now finds herself “not in the same place I was when I made this music”. Now, more than ever, she is finding security and a sense of home inside herself first and foremost, before the wheel starts turning again. And turn it will: “I’m going to LA after [the release of the EP] for three weeks,” she shares. “No rest for the wicked!”
Nia Smith’s ‘Payback Is A Dog’ EP is out now via Def Jam 0207 Records.
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