“I always had great ambitions in life. But I never thought a song of mine which had been around for years would become this hit,” the Somali singer, Nimco Happy, tells BBC News Africa.
Nimco gained viral fame with her song, “Isii Nafta”, which translates to “Give Me Life” in English.
The song made its way into public consciousness last month after gaining traction on TikTok and eventually other apps, like Twitter and Instagram.
The song has been the soundtrack to numerous dance videos around the web, with many gaining millions of views from around the world.
On the 29th of October, Cardi B posted a video of her and her sister, Hennessy, doing a dance routine to the song to her TikTok account. Drake commented “this song so hard” on a meme page, and Bella Hadid took to Instagram to share a video of Nimco performing with dancing police officers in her home town of Mogadishu, Somalia.
This isn’t the first time the song has proved a hit, going viral around East Africa in 2019 as well. The popularity is owed to her use of four different languages, Swahili, Somali, English and Arabic to sing the catchy hook, which in part says “I love you.”
Though initially made in 2016, the official version was only released onto public streaming platforms, such as Spotify, last month after Nimco signed a deal with Polydor.