After years of gimmicks and algorithm-riding rap, a new wave of German hip-hop is coming – and Nana Le Vrai and his Bombaclart Bass crew are riding the crest.

Words by: Megan Wallace
Photography:Tereza Mundilová
Photography Assistant: Louis Headlam
Digi Tech: Sebastian Haas
Stylist: Olive Duran
Hair & Makeup: Marvin Glißmann
Set Design: Sandro de Mauro
Set Design Assistant: David Diniz
Producer: Rachael Bigelow

After years of gimmicks and algorithm-riding rap, a new wave of German hip-hop is coming - and Nana Le Vrai and his Bombaclart Bass crew are riding the crest.

The video for Nana Le Vrai’s single Neuer Wall stops abruptly halfway through. A bearded man in his late twenties, with a fitted cap and northern German accent, addresses the camera from a hotel room in Brixton: “Ihr hört jetzt mal zu. Wir sind hier in Brixton. Bombaclart Bass hat uns hierher gebracht. Unsere Musik, unser Talent, hat uns hierher gebracht.” (“You guys listen up: we’re here in Brixton. Bombaclart Bass brought us here. Our music, our talent, has brought us here.”)

He’s bigging up his crew, but at the same time, he sounds almost incredulous about what their life in music together has blessed them with. This is Haaizey, DJ and founder of Bombaclart Bass. Behind the camera is his younger cousin, Nana Le Vrai, one of German rap’s rising talents. Nana and Bombaclart Bass have earned local fame - first in Hamburg-Altona, then in small pockets all over Germany - and are now getting ready to take the next step.

Nana Le Vrai was born in 1999, the year in which German hip-hop saw its first commercial breakthrough with acts like Absolute Beginner and Freundeskreis. Since then, ‘Deutschrap’ has gone through many ups and downs, creatively and economically. The wordy raps of the late 90s, largely shaped by and for a middle class audience, was followed by a swathe of provocative gangsta rap out of Berlin – a city that, for all its cultural nous, didn’t play much of a role in hip-hop until the 2000s. Before then, it was Nana Le Vrai’s hometown of Hamburg that dominated the scene. When the street-rap boom became formulaic – and, for the most part, imploded – in the 2010s, indie- and electro-inspired (“hipster”) rap took its place. Then came the advent of streaming and, just like anywhere else, nothing was ever the same again.

Recently, German hip-hop has undergone a love-hate relationship with streaming platforms. It’s never been easier for young artists to create and share their music, but cutting through the noise usually requires ending up on the right platform-curated playlist, only for every original idea to be almost immediately ripped off by countless copycats. But now, the power of the playlist is diminishing and there’s evidence of another seismic shift in play.

There are aspects of Nana Le Vrai’s anything-goes brand of rap that mark him as a child of his time. There’s his ability to think in singles and one-offs, which often results in wild stylistic shifts from one track to the next. Nana and his crew are not the first young Germans to experiment with sounds inspired by drill, Afrobeats, and the hardcore continuum, styles he champions in his instrumentals and DJ sets.

When we meet Nana Le Vrai, he’s tired but happy after a late night DJing at an NTS Radio collaborative night in Berlin, where he now lives. Many will have first heard Nana three years ago, when he was rapping under the name NYK Le Vrai. Back then, he appeared on the Aboveground YouTube channel, surrounded by a crew of mostly Black German kids backing his flow as he spat over the holiest of grime riddims, Rhythm N Gash. A quarter of a million views (and numerous mispronunciations of his moniker) later, he switched to his given first name and started to perform as Nana Le Vrai.

“I always knew I wanted to take something grime-ish to kick things off,” he tells us. “Most people really loved it, although some thought it was outrageous that I’d introduce myself rapping over such an iconic instrumental. I went through a couple of beats and deliberately chose Rhythm N Gash, hoping it would get some people talking.”

Nana was born and bred in the Osdorf part of Altona, an ethnically diverse and countercultural district of Hamburg. At 25, he’s too young to have witnessed the first wave of Hamburg rap that dominated Germany, with acts such as the street-rap group 187 Strassenbande. Nana’s rap career kicked off in a group chat, where he and his friends exchanged diss verses.

Through his cousin Haaizey, some of these diss verses, recorded as voice notes, made their way to Kwam.E – a rapper who rose to fame in 2016 through his verse on Ace Tee’s 90s R&B throwback hit Bist Du Down?. Tom Hengst, the Hamburg MC who found success with his stylish update of classic Memphis rap, became an early mentor of Nana’s. “Kwam.E and Tom were the first to drag me to the studio and really push me. If they hadn’t done that, I don’t think I’d ever have released any rap songs.”

On his first full-length project, 2023’s Juniversum, Nana stresses that he never intended to be a rapper, while on In Meiner Bag, he confesses: “Wollte nie rappen, aber heute zahlen sie für ne Show/ Ja sie wollen, dass ich perform.” (“Never wanted to rap, but now they’re paying me to do shows/ Yeah, they want me to perform.”)

Besides his older sister, who gifted Nana with his first mp3 player full of R&B, hip-hop and Ghanaian rap, Haaizey is Nana’s biggest musical influence. It was Nana’s older cousin who first introduced him to the spectrum of bass-heavy UK music that influences his contemporary sound.

Nana Le Vrai, Haaizey, Yung Palo and Waffle P make up the core of Bombaclart Bass – a name coined in 2018 for a series of parties in Hamburg, founded by Haaizey. Nana joined later, still in his music-making infancy, and suggested they use Bombaclart Bass as an umbrella for their collective efforts. Palo and Waffle P came on board in 2021 and they’ve been weaving all their projects together ever since – parties, community events, merch drops and music releases.

Given the speed and tenacity with which the crew navigates the underground, it would be reasonable to assume that there’s a grand strategy in play. But Nana denies this, laughing. “I’m happy to hear that it looks like there’s a master plan and that we’re run like a company, but that’s not the case. We’re just trying to build something for us and our people, while making something new and fresh.”

With Nana Le Vrai and Bombaclart Bass on the cusp of breaking through, the industry is finally starting to notice them. Videos for singles with Yung Palo and hyped Hamburg artists Ansu and Levin Liam, and live shows and DJ sets for Boiler Room and HÖR Berlin have all garnered attention across Germany. While they will engage in talks with industry players, Nana stresses that he and his crew are a DIY operation, involved in every aspect of their art.

“It’s shocking to me, still, that these things just happen now. All of a sudden you get these opportunities… it’s unreal,” he reflects, “especially for someone like me. I was never the loudest in school. I’m more of an introvert. So for me to stand on stage or DJ at a big festival, my personality has to switch 180 degrees.”

Nana’s showmanship is displayed on his aforementioned 2023 album debut, Juniversum. Across its ten tracks and 20-minute run time, Nana bops and weaves across myriad styles: jangly guitars and 4×4 Jersey Club rhythms, hard-edged drill and trap textures, and frantic hyperpop with romantic lyrics and sped-up vocals. “That’s probably the reason why so many tracks sound so different and why I can’t dig some of the [older] records I made any more. They’re reflections of just one moment, one idea I wanted to go after,” he says.

Rooted in this eclectic musical language are lyrics – delivered with an elastic, adaptable flow and monotonous voice – that feel like another instrument. At first listen, Nana’s motivational raps hype up his team and stress his ambitions. But dig a little deeper and a more personal story emerges: Nana is of Ghanaian heritage, and he’s planning another trip to visit his family there later this year. “I couldn’t go for a long time, but the plan is to go this autumn with my girlfriend, my mother and my sister. I have always had a close relationship with Ghana.” His parents used to run an Afroshop, an African produce store designed for the local Afro-German community. “The culture has been all around me.”

His DJ career, under the name Nana Tranquillo, has been picking up pace, too. He recently started collecting vinyl records, and West African music is one of his current obsessions. He and Haaizey are currently looking into ways they can connect with the vibrant scene in Ghana. Nana admits that his busy DJ schedule makes it harder to properly map out new releases of his own, but insists that he and Bombaclart Bass are cooking something up for late 2025. Given the steadily building buzz, he knows that he’s got to make his next moves count. “Even if there’s no fixed plan, everything I do has to make an impact,” he says.