Nana Le Vrai: Future Shock

After years of gimmicks and algorithm-driven 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-20s, 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. For Nana Le Vrai, though, being more direct and DIY — referencing the underground rather than the playlist-powered mainstream — is the way forward. 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 beats, 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. In typically 21st century fashion, 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.