Born and brought up in Warri, in
the Delta region of Nigeria, Nneka attended Delta Steel Company Primary School,
after which she proceeded to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
Secondary School.
Nneka relished the experience of
singing from an early age while in school and in the church choir. After
relocating to Hamburg, Germany, at the age of 18, she pursued a career in
singing alongside a degree in Anthropology at the University of Hamburg.
In 2003, Nneka started working
closely with the hip hop beat maker DJ Farhot, a producer living in Hamburg.
As a young singer she first gained
public attention in 2004 while performing as an opening act for dancehall
reggae star Sean Paul at Hamburg Stadtpark. After much acclaim, Nneka had the
green light to record her first album.
She finished recording her first
album ‘Victim of Truth’ in the autumn of 2005 and was released not only in
Germany but also in England, France, Netherlands, Nigeria and Japan, garnering
rave reviews from the media; the UK’s Sunday Times later declared it “the
year’s most criminally overlooked album”, comparing it favourably to ‘The
Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’.
In February 2008 she released her
second album, ‘No Longer at Ease’. The title of the album was the title of a
novel by Chinua Achebe and reflects the lyrical content of the record. Most of the
songs are political, talking about the plight of the Niger Delta and the
corruption in Nigeria.
‘No Longer at Ease’ combines the
political and the personal in a winning mix of soul, hip-hop and reggae. The
lead single from it, Heartbeat, became her first song to break into the German
Top 50. In September 2009, the song also entered the UK Singles Chart at number
twenty.
Nneka has been nominated in three
categories for the 2009 Channel O Music Video Awards, and won an award for Best
African Act at the 2009 MOBO Awards. Also in June 2010, she won the reggae
category of the Museke Online Africa Music Award 2010 with her hit song,
Africans.
Other awards she had won include
the best indigenous artist in Nigeria at the Nigerian Entertainment Awards
(NEA) 2010 held in New York, U.S.A.
Though Nneka sings more than raps,
she names hip hop as her primary musical root and most important source of
inspiration, while citing artists such as Fela Kuti and Bob Marley as well as
contemporary rappers Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Lauryn Hill as key influences in
her own pursuit of musical recognition.
Her lyrics reflect much of her
history and life in Nigeria as well as her time spent in Western Europe. Her
songs stress the issues of capitalism, poverty and war and are often loaded
with moral and biblical messages and references, with some music commentators
comparing her to Erykah Badu of America; Swedish singer-songwriter, rapper,
Neneh Cherry and British R&B duo, Floetry.
Nneka’s music is nothing short of
original, unique and is always filled with a socially conscious message.
Mary Onyeure
... Making SENSE of digital revolution!
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