Aisha Badru - The Way Back Home (EP)

“I feel like we live two lives at once,” says Aisha Badru, the acclaimed US indie-folk artist whose whispery observations have evolved, in just three short years, into evocative assurance. “For me, it’s that image of what I thought I was, and then watching that person die by the hand of truth. Being reborn.”

Aisha Badru builds atmospheric soundscapes, deeply rooted in nature, spirituality, family and homecoming and her latest and third EP, ‘The Way Back Home’ (out now via Nettwerk Records), is the sonic equivalent of a comforting hug. It feels like an antidote to her sweetly melancholic debut, ‘Pendulum’, which negotiated her underprivileged upbringing.

Along the way, Aisha’s humanistic confessionals have won more than 100M+ streams, a fanbase in Europe, and the praise of publications (such as NPR, who celebrated her “warm and inviting” approach). While writing ‘The Way Back Home’, she says, “I knew exactly what to say without thinking about it. It was as if I was writing exactly from my heart.”

Still, she gently reminds us that this courage has been hard-earned. ‘The Way Back Home’s most stirring track, “Rebirth,” is a spoken-word piece that builds into a joyous melody, capturing her personal transformation (“Buried beneath the earth / Covered / Forgotten / Destined to rise again”). “I used to have very low self-esteem. I thought I needed other people to validate me.” Aisha truly believed life was finite, that opportunities would never present themselves to her. She was wrong.