Nemahsis says her label dropped her for her pro-Palestinian stance
The Palestinian Canadian artist recalls how her contract was terminated in the days following Oct. 7
In early October of last year, Nemah Hasan, also known as Nemahsis, flew to Los Angeles to sign a record deal for her debut full-length album. As she approached the meeting room, she heard drums playing so loud that the walls were shaking.
"The door opens and there's a Palestinian anthem playing," Hasan recalls in an interview with Q's Tom Power. "I was like, 'Why are you playing this song?' And they were like, 'Oh, we wanted to show you we know what it takes to represent a Palestinian artist.'"
While the song choice made Hasan uncomfortable, she says she signed the paperwork and went home, at which point everything seemed to be fine.
But just a few days later on Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel, marking a turning point in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hasan didn't release an official statement at that time, but she says she did start reposting pro-Palestinian content on her personal social media accounts. Shortly after that, she says her label dropped her without explanation.
"My label just dropped me, a Palestinian artist, for being pro-Palestine," Hasan shared in a TikTok video posted on Oct. 12. She has not disclosed the name of the label that dropped her.
After her contract was terminated, Hasan says all of her music industry connections immediately cut contact with her. "I was fully ostracized," she tells Power. "I didn't think there was going to be a future in music."
Under the circumstances, it seemed incredibly unlikely that Hasan's finished album would ever see the light of day. This was particularly painful for her because she had been told by several different labels that the record was "probably album of the year" but there was just no way of marketing it.
After a period of mourning and waiting for the dust to settle, Hasan began to call every label she could looking for distribution.
"There was finally one distribution label that was in Toronto that was like, 'We're edgy. We work with a lot of edgy artists,'" she recalls. "I was like, 'OK, I don't really think being Palestinian is edgy, but go off king, let's do it.'"
By late April, Hasan says the deal had been finalized and she flew back to L.A. to sign the papers — but like her last deal, this one also fell through.
"I don't know what happened in that 24 hours, but they were like, 'Hey, it's not going to work out,'" she says. "I was already in L.A. and I just broke down."
Crying in her hotel lobby surrounded by her entire team, Hasan remembers hearing her song I wanna be your right hand serendipitously blasting through the hotel speakers.
"I just start crying even harder," she says. "[My team was] like, 'I think this is a sign we need to go.' And that night I said, 'May 23, we're releasing the first song independently. We're going independent. Fully. No publishing, no distribution, no label. We're doing it.'"
Now, Hasan has independently released two new singles, You Wore it Better and Stick of Gum, in advance of her debut album that will be coming out later this year. Stick of Gum is about her negative experience in the music industry. She shot the music video for the song in her family's home of Jericho in the West Bank.
"We want to show Palestine in a light that has never been seen," Hasan says. "Some people didn't even know Palestine existed until October, and now we want to show them in a way where we're humanized again."
For more, check out the full interview with Nemahsis, available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Nemahsis produced by Cora Nijhawan.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
