At just 25 years old, Ninho has established himself as a pillar of French rap, alongside Jul and PNL.
Jefe
(chef in Spanish), his third album, which will be released on December 3, is an invitation to travel.
A trip to try to break through the “success story” of this rap meteorite, totally unknown five years ago.
“We don't know the life of a guy who arrives at the top, who manages to make his plan a reality.
We do not know the beginning, the base, the foundations.
We often look at the house but never the foundations, ”
he said in an interview with AFP.
Read also List of albums sold in 2020: Ninho, Maes ... The reign of shooting stars
The foundations are those years of hardship before breaking through or his life in low-cost housing in the greater Parisian suburbs, which he recounts in titles such as
RER D
or
Vérité
and where he praises "the charm of the ghetto".
Not just the story of a defector,
Jefe,
15 titles including no collaboration, is also a manifesto.
That of a young man who started rap at the age of 12 "out of passion" and who is today one of his biggest headliners.
Discreet and mysterious
However,
NI
assures to try to
"keep a cool head and the head on the shoulders". “Fame, all that doesn't matter. For me, the most important thing is to continue to create ”.
Create and stay away from the "clashes" so common in the world of rap. With his chubby face, his clear voice, and his shyness that he struggles to conceal, the rapper, very discreet in the media, has never ceased to cultivate the mystery.
On the form,
Jefe
takes again the codes of his previous discs: a clever mix between rocky and purely rapped titles and others more dancing and sung, like
Aicha
, a nod to the song of Khaled, singer of Algerian raï.
Rumba, tones close to raï or pop ... These mixtures, so little present in rap a few years ago, allowed him to impose himself on a hyper competitive scene.
And to win over a female audience, until then neglected by this environment.
Born in Longjumeau, in Essonne, south of Paris, to parents from Congo Kinshasa, William Nzobazola, whose real name is, has music in his veins: his father Serge Kiambukuta is a Congolese rumba singer.
Two billion views on YouTube
But now, William, he is only interested in rap, which he practices without the knowledge of his parents. Gradually, William will give way to Ninho, a nickname that
“the older people of the city gave to the children, the“ niños ””
(children in Spanish), he explains.
In 2014, his first mixtape came out:
They're not aware
, a barely veiled reference to his parents. But the first years are difficult and success is long overdue.
“It was complicated at first, but educational because I learned to work fast, write fast, record and mix fast,”
he says. The success came in 2016 with his mixtape
MILS
(
Now they know it
). A year later, his debut album
As expected
, made him a rap star.
The year 2018 is a prosperous year.
He continues collaborations with rap heavyweights such as Rim'K or SCH.
Everyone is snapping up the "bambino", promised a bright future.
Prolific, he released
Destin
in 2019
, which made him the most listened to French artist on streaming platforms in front of the Marseillais Jul or the two PNL brothers.
Last July, his Youtube channel surpassed the two billion views mark.
Can Jefe
do better than
Destin
?
“We'll see,”
replies the artist.
"If it works so much the better, if it doesn't work, too bad, we will propose another project"
.
While waiting for the response of the charts, a tour in all France is already planned for 2022. The "niño" of rap has grown.
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