Baby K Italian Rapper and Singer Born 1983 in Singapore

Early life

Baby K, whose birth name is Claudia Judith Nahum, was born on 5 February 1983 in Singapore to Italian parents. She spent the first years of her life in Jakarta and was then raised in London, in the suburb of Pinner. During her school years she attended the Harrow School of Young Musicians, which gave her the chance to take part in a musical tour of Europe.

In 2000 she moved to Italy after roughly ten years abroad. She began working on hip hop radio programmes there, which led her into the Italian rap scene.

Career

Her first steps as a recording artist came in 2008, when she worked with the Quadraro Basement collective and released the five-track EP S.O.S. Around two years later she put out the single "Femmina alfa", which reached more than 10,000 downloads in its first few months.

Her first official solo album, Una seria, was released in 2013 through Sony Music. It reached the top of the iTunes chart and entered the Italian FIMI album chart at number ten. That spring she opened for Azealia Banks on the only Italian date of the American rapper's tour. In September 2013 she released "Killer", a collaboration with Tiziano Ferro, which became her first single to reach the Italian top ten. She followed it with "Sei sola", again with Ferro, and with a track with Fabri Fibra that shares the title of her album.

The song that carried her to a national audience was "Roma-Bangkok", a duet with Giusy Ferreri released in 2015. It reached number one in Italy, was certified diamond for 500,000 sales and went on to be the best-selling single of the year in the country. It also entered charts in Finland, France and Switzerland. Her second studio album, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, appeared on 11 September 2015 and debuted at number four on the Italian albums chart. The single "Chiudo gli occhi e salto", written with Federica Abbate, was released to radio the following month.

In 2017 she released "Voglio ballare con te" with Andrés Dvicio. The song peaked at number two on the Italian singles chart, sold more than 250,000 copies and had a video that passed 100 million views on YouTube. In 2018 she issued "Da zero a cento", which also debuted at number two and sold over 150,000 copies, and "Come no". Her third studio album, Icona, arrived on 18 November 2018, collected her recent hits and entered the FIMI chart at number six. The standalone single "Playa", released on 31 May 2019, became her fifth song in the Italian top ten and sold more than 100,000 copies.

She opened the next decade with "Buenos Aires" in March 2020, the lead single from her coming album, and in July of that year released "Non mi basta più" together with the Italian influencer Chiara Ferragni. Her fourth album, Donna sulla Luna, followed in 2021, alongside singles including "Pa ti", "Mohicani" and "Non dire una parola". Later releases include "Easy" and "Bolero" in 2022, "M'ama non m'ama" in 2023, "Una notte" and "Fino al Blackout" in 2024, "Follia mediterranea" and "Dimmi dimmi dimmi" in 2025, and "Tucamacarena" in 2026. Her work is generally placed within pop and hip hop.

By one count from 2022, she had sold more than 1.1 million copies in Italy, held seven entries among the country's ten best-selling singles, earned over twenty platinum certifications and had three music videos that each passed 100 million views.

Recognition

Baby K won an MTV Italian Music Awards prize for best new artist in 2013. She has received three Wind Music Awards for her multi-platinum singles, and the Lunezia Prize for Musical-Literary Value, which recognised her songwriting process. In 2015 "Roma-Bangkok" became the first of her videos to receive a Vevo certification, and "Voglio ballare con te" later earned her a second one. In 2023 she was named among the most-streamed Italian artists on Pandora.