Toronto's Nemahsis Pays Her Dues with "dollar signs"

It's the powerful new single from the Palestinian-Canadian artist

BY Megan LaPierrePublished Jan 19, 2022

GTA-hailing Nemahsis — born Nemah Hasan — reckons with exploitation on her latest single "dollar signs."

Following her debut 2021 singles "what if i took it off for you?" and "paper thin," the artist's first offering of 2022 is a delicate, organic arrangement driven by the gravitas of her words and silken vocals as she speaks to her experiences with tokenism as a Muslim woman.

"Society takes, yet rarely does it return," the Palestinian-Canadian said in a statement. "It is eager to put its people in a glass box; to be an exhausting display extracting what is deemed profitable for personal gain."

She added: "Numerous times, I have found myself being taken advantage of — often in ways unimaginable. I can't say that I am proud of every decision or every path I've taken, but I can say proudly that still, my 'noes' outnumber the 'yeses.'"

The Crowns & Owls-directed clip sees Nemahsis perform in a traditional Palestinian front room, frozen in near-tableau as the camera eventually pans to show her contextualized within a wider, Westernized narrative.

Watch the video for "dollar signs" below.

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