Kenyan R&B vocalist Nikita Kering’ has released ‘The Lick Back,’ her first independent project since parting ways with Universal Music Africa. The five-track EP, written in three weeks, arrives after a year she describes as marked by a costly label exit, grief, and a deliberate reset of her creative process.
A Return Marred by Silence
Days before a June showcase meant to reintroduce her music, Kering’ lost her voice. A severe cold left her vocal cords inflamed, and she was placed on vocal rest. With cancellation no longer possible, she lip-synced the performance, a compromise she found deeply uncomfortable.
“Somebody paid their ticket to come and listen to a live show, they didn’t pay to come and listen to the track,” she said in an interview. “I hate the dishonesty behind that.”
Reclaiming Control, Not Seeking Retaliation
The EP’s title draws from the phrase “get your lick back,” which Kering’ interprets as personal victory rather than attack. “For me, getting revenge can never mean going on attack,” she said. “It actually just means winning for myself… just doing really well for myself.”
That mindset follows a period of professional upheaval. After gaining recognition through AFRIMA (All Africa Music Awards) wins and Apple Music’s Africa Rising program, she signed with Universal Music Africa in 2022. But the relationship soured, and extracting herself from the contract became, in her words, “a terrible experience.”
“Just getting out of that process as a whole was crazy, and recovering financially from that as well was crazy,” she said. “It hindered me from being able to get other opportunities, because a lot of people don’t want to be involved with somebody who just has a lot of baggage.”
Scrapping a Finished Project
During that period, Kering’ released singles she now calls uninspired, sensing she was losing fans. Determined to stop operating on autopilot, she scrapped an entire EP that was already completed and mastered.
“The same day [my team] gave me a due date for the final masters, I just changed my mind,” she recalled. “I was like, no, this music is not a reflection of who I am today.”
She wrote ‘The Lick Back’ in three weeks, keeping the process close and resisting the overthinking that had previously diluted her work. “It was about trusting myself, but also accepting I might make bad decisions, and I need to be okay living with that,” she said.
Songs of Boundaries and Value
The EP’s lead single, “Niwache,” blends dancehall textures with a demand for clarity in love: “Ka hunitaki si uniwache (If you don’t want me, just leave me).” On “Give Me My Money,” the demand shifts to fair compensation and a critique of opaque music-business practices.
Kering’ argues that artists are often handed complex contracts without the legal or business knowledge to parse them. “They know that artists don’t go to school for this,” she said. “They can write over-complicated contracts in a way that the artist is not going to understand. That’s why artists need to consider that their managers need to know business, and they need to know law.”
An Independent Path, Not a Rejection of Labels
Going independent is expensive and difficult, she acknowledges, but the experience taught her that corporations are not as intimidating as they appear when an artist has a genuine fan base and community. “I’m not opposed to labels,” she said. “I’m opposed to a bad deal.”
