We Are Nubia Is Turning Softness Into One of Nairobi’s Most Compelling Sounds

When their hit song “DND” took off in 2025, We Are Nubia were not fully ready for what came with it.

The track, a fierce, Taarab-tinged collaboration with Zaituni Wambui, pushed the Nairobi duo beyond their early circle of loyal listeners and into a wider Kenyan and regional audience. Suddenly, Gloria Munga and Maggie Atieno were no longer just a promising act with a growing following. They had a song people knew and shared.

But success also exposed the gap between having a moment and being ready to sustain it.

“We don’t want to be a statistic,” Atieno tells OkayAfrica on a virtual call alongside Munga. “Those girls who used to sing, then disappeared.”

On the call, the two slip easily into each other’s rhythm. They laugh over each other’s answers, tease, and occasionally finish each other’s thoughts. Though they may be new to many outside of Kenya, they have known each other — and been building together — for years. Beneath the camaraderie is a shared understanding of what they are creating and what it will take to sustain it.

Needs, their debut EP, is the result of that realization.

The Nairobi duo is making soft, Kiswahili-led music that is ambitious. Since they first came on the scene, their sound has moved across genres without losing its center. At a time when Kenya’s streaming charts are still heavily shaped by foreign artists, We Are Nubia are doubling down on the local language and feeling, as well as the emotional textures of modern Kenyan womanhood.

Nowhere is this more apparent than on “Available,” the EP’s most recent single. Soft, warm, with a Kompa-influenced bounce, the song leans into a girl’s softness and the vulnerability of opening up emotionally to someone, especially in a notoriously difficult dating city like Nairobi.

“It just makes you want to swing your waist,” Maggie says.

Before they were a duo making waist-swaying music, there was a choir. 

Both Gloria and Maggie started singing in church, learning early how to carry a song in front of people. Gloria remembers reciting psalms as a Catholic chorister before growing into leadership roles in school choirs. Maggie recalls joining her mother for choir rehearsals, where someone noticed her voice and began giving her solos.

By the time they met in a Nairobi-based choir after high school, music was already second nature. What changed there was the sense that it could be used for something more than church.

At first, they were part of a group of five friends trying to build something together. But the group gradually fell apart, until only the two of them remained.

“We just said, we’re going for this,” Gloria explains, adding that it was a moment that became a commitment to music and each other.

Their name came soon after. A friend suggested “Nubia” as they were tossing around name options. When they looked it up and saw it meant gold, it immediately felt right. Neither is Nubian, but the name gave them language for the kind of group they wanted to become. A group that was valuable, lasting, and worth taking seriously.

They have had to choose that seriousness again and again. Both trained for careers outside music — Gloria in law, Maggie in tech — paths that would have offered more stability. For now, those qualifications sit “on paper,” as they put it, useful for reassuring family, but no longer the center of their plans.

“You don’t want to let the other person down,” Gloria says of being in a group. “Because you know what they’ve put into it.”

From Breakthrough Hits to a Cohesive Debut EP: How We Are Nubia Defined Their Sound.

Their first song, “Ni Wewe,” in 2022 was a love song rooted in devotion, showcasing their harmonies, their command of Swahili, and a sense of emotional clarity that would come to define their work.But it took time for audiences to catch on. It wasn’t until their 2024 song,

“Niko Sawa,”

about navigating grief after heartbreak, that things shifted.“That’s the song that made Nairobi pay attention,” Gloria says. Looking back, what surprises her is not that it worked, but that it took so long. “We always knew it was good. People just needed to catch up.”When they did, the effect spread backward. Listeners went back to earlier songs like “Mapenzi ya Cinema,” realizing the duo had already been building something.

By the time “DND” arrived, that foundation was in place. The song expanded their reach, while performances at spaces like Blankets & Wine confirmed that they were on their way.

“DND” itself came together almost as quickly as it spread, now at. They walked into the studio wanting something bold and co-wrote and recorded the song in a single night. When another producer picked up on its Taarab lean and suggested bringing in Wambui, the collaboration followed just as easily.

The lesson they took from it stayed with them.“Don’t overthink anything.”

That same instinct to experiment shows up in how they describe their sound.

“It’s explorative,” Gloria says. “We don’t want to box ourselves.”

They move across genres, but over time, they have become more deliberate about emphasizing their Kenyan identity.“At the beginning, we were just trying things,” Maggie says. “But as we grew, we realized we wanted to make our country proud.”

That intention shows up in the language they use, in the rhythms they return to, and in the way Kiswahili anchors their music even as the sound shifts.

Needs is the clearest expression of that, stretched across a full body of work. The five-track EP, produced by Run, marks a shift from scattered singles to a cohesive project. After “DND,” they made a deliberate decision to build something that could hold together, working on the project from July to December 2025.

The concept is simple: “Everyone has needs,” Gloria says.

From there, the songs take shape: the need to leave a toxic relationship on “No Love,” the need to confess and make yourself emotionally available on “Available,” the need to commit on “Forever,” the need to shoot your shot on “DND,” and the need to feel free on “Sway.”

Each track explores a different version of that idea, but all are tied to the same emotional thread.

The EP also marks a new phase for We Are Nubia, with newly signed artists under the Kenya-based label The Future. With label support, they are thinking more intentionally about what comes next: more music, more visuals, and more collaborations.

And if Needs is any indication, they are building something designed to stay.

“We’re going to be in your faces,” Atieno says, laughing. “Until you get tired.”