Nayef Issa Fosters the Growth of D.C.’s Cultural Landscape

Nayef Issa, founder and creative force behind party music collective Nü Androids and subprojects A.i and Dimensions, has been making a name — and an impact — fostering the growth of the lesser-seen side of D.C.’s cultural landscape since 2014.

Issa emigrated with his family from Beirut, Lebanon to Northern Virginia when he was 7-years-old. He watched as his family members found success in small businesses and was no stranger to the value in a self-guided journey. He attended school at Northern Virginia Community College and worked for a time with T-Mobile. But that wasn’t a career path Issa was interested in continuing down.

“I knew at a young age that I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” Issa says. “All my family members, they own some restaurants, gas stations and cigar shops and the like. So, I was kind of just always around that entrepreneur mentality. I never vibed with the corporate structure. I work on passion.”

That passion initially led him to promoting and hosting events and finding footing in the early aughts’ club culture. But Issa knew this wasn’t his calling, either. He continued to seek out what he describes as forward-thinking music, and to expand both his knowledge base of musical talent and his already wide local network.

It wasn’t long, Issa says, before he got bored of bottle popping. He needed to “activate his creativity.” Issa and a friend decided to shake up the scene’s status quo. They used their experience and extensive community ties to hone in on up-and-coming talent who blurred the boundaries of DJing and party music genres.

Around the same time, D.C.’s now iconic nightclub, Flash, had opened its U Street Corridor doors as an intimate and edgy space for music lovers looking for something a little different than the offerings at nearby concert venues. Issa and his partner approached the management team at Flash with an idea to pilot a Wednesday night 21+ music and dance party.

Issa and Co. became Nü Androids, an arts and entertainment collective putting avant-garde artists on the bill. Nü Androids booked rising talent Wax Motif for their first show, in hopes of appealing to a broad audience.

“He was a very good blend between the electronic scene and hip hop,” says Issa. The event sold out, and Nü Androids knew they were on to something.

That’s when Wednesday became the new Friday at Flash, with the midweek shows regularly reaching capacity.

At Nü Androids, Issa casts a wide net in scouting and cold-calling artists. Early shows included acts that wouldn’t normally have found a home in the D.C. market: Mura Masa, Purple Disco Machine, Nora En Pure, Matoma, Ekali and Yaeji, to name a few.

“We never really focused on a specific genre, you know?” Issa says. “There are a lot of really cool collectives here that are doing techno or 140-BPM pop dance music or dubstep or what have you. I was like, no. I want to book a plethora of stuff, and I don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves. And so, we were booking kind of all over the spectrum.”

Issa continued to expand his creative endeavors, using the recognition he’d built with Nü Androids to launch sub-projects A.i and Dimensions. Issa’s idea was to move outside of the club — to use the model but change the players to expand the scene so it could appeal to a more diverse set of people looking for a multi-faceted entertainment experience.

Issa eventually shifted the spaces for his artistic happenings to the “other side of town,” and beyond, including Art Basel in 2019. With the custom brand A.i., Issa has hosted music and visual artists together for multi- and meta-sensory pop-up events in underutilized spaces and unexpected venues including warehouses, commercial kitchens and what Issa calls “blank canvases.”

Now, with roughly 180 events a year, Nü Androids / A.i. shows range from 500 – 2,500+ people per show, and they have featured chart-topping artists such as FKJ, the late Virgil Abloh (in his performance in D.C.), Black Coffee, the late Sophie, Gorgon City, Malaa, Dom Dolla, The Knocks, Tchami and Snakehips.

“My favorite parties are the ones that blend the culture, the colors, the special effects, everything,” says Issa.

As Issa approaches his 40th birthday later this year, he reflects on what he has learned about the business side of creative entrepreneurship, while looking forward to future creations and collaborations. He knows that many in the D.C. industry have laid extensive groundwork to draw talent into what is still described by many as a “Tier B” entertainment market, and he acknowledges his own role in continuing to move the dial. Issa intentionally leaves set times off show invites and listings, and actively encourages people to support all of the talent — even offering reduced ticket prices for those who arrive earlier in the evening.

“In D.C., you feel like you’re actually building something; the market is not oversaturated. It’s cool to put on shows for your city and to feel like you are really helping to expand the culture,” Issa says.

Still, pop-ups become political and red tape restricts rented space. Infrastructure issues stalled the opening of the Nü Androids permanent space, forthcoming this fall. A self-proclaimed hater of politics, Issa is nevertheless committed to getting the systems in place to support the city’s cultural growth.

“I’m always open and down to work with anybody in D.C. from the grassroots, because I firmly believe we have a lot of cool creative people in the city. D.C. gets overlooked just because people think of D.C. as just a lobbying and government bullshit town,” Issa says. “But no, it’s a creative scene here, and I want to do right and vocalize my issues to hopefully push the envelope forward.”

Learn more about Nü Androids at nuandroids.com and follow the collective on Instagram at @nuandroids. Follow Issa on Instagram at @nayeftissa.

Courtney Sexton

Courtney Sexton is a New Jersey native who grew up between the Delaware River and the sandy Pine Barrens, though she has called D.C. home for long enough to now be considered a “local." She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is the co-founder of D.C. literary reading series and writing community, The Inner Loop. She writes a good deal about places and human relationships to them, constantly exploring the intersections of nature and culture. Dogs feature prominently in her life and work. Visit her website at theinnerlooplit.org. Photo by Chris Loupos.