With Nina Chuba, it works through proximity: the shared worries and joys, she shares everything anyway; the truth; taking the Tiktok friends with you to your own balcony for the “dying” rosemary (careful, Influencer-Denglisch, meaning: “withering”); especially the proximity of the phone camera to the selfie face and the resulting huge eyes. So-called manga eyes don’t work in a concert hall.
A year ago, in little Milla, the proximity was already purely local, in the Olympiahalle supporting Marteria it didn’t matter, but now in front of 2000 fans in the Tonhalle, which has been sold out for a long time, it really matters. Does the German pop-rap climber of the hour keep her superstar promise? Her debut album “Glas” is one of the five best-selling albums of the year, all the feuilletons become raving teenagers, on “The Voice Kids” children sing their cocktail hit “Wildberry Lillet” about the dream of fame. Nina Chuba did it on her behalf.
The illusion is that “everything is still the same”: “The money is right / But I still don’t feel much better in gray Givenchy pants.” That’s how “the girl from the small town” Wesel, who has moved to Berlin, raps. credible. Even if she always pretends to be about eight years younger than her 24 years, she has now arrived at the phase of life’s first wisdom, quarter-life crisis, you could say. There is always something destructive behind the party bragging rights, sometimes it gets the big puke (“I hate you”), sometimes she herself (“With two hundred km ∕ h / black ice / Autobahn / I don’t give a shit”). In concert, she conveys that less closely than on Tiktok. She moderates a few pieces a little awkwardly with the “Do you know the feeling too” Tiktok scam.
Sometimes snooty, sometimes melodic, always jolly
One number is particularly important to her, she says, who had her first burnout at the age of nine after her role in the ZDF children’s detective series “Die Pfefferkörner”: “Far too little is said about depression.” Hm, you don’t have to have that impression after all the current artist “confessions”. But she sings “Not alone” touchingly, accompanies herself alone on the piano to show how serious she is.
What helps? At that age you still think: drinking. So what all rhymes with Lillet, Gin, Kir Royal and Limoncello? Nina Chuba raps it, sometimes snooty, sometimes melodic, sometimes whipping, always cheerful. Too nice variable sound from seedFrom dancehall to industrial techno, she meanders in a crop top, swings her hip-length pom-pom braids and waves her arms animatingly like in “Oberbayern” in El Arenal. That’s fine for the party moment, but for even larger halls, more is needed. In the Tonhalle there is already a poster for May 7, 2024 in the Zenith.