Nadia Nakai is one of Mzansi’s best rappers, on that we can all agree. She first rose to prominence with her Nadia Naked album, and she has since cemented her place in our hearts as one of Mzansi’s sweethearts.
She has been in the spotlight for so long and gathered so many fans, followers and haters alike, that it may sometimes feel like we know all there is to know about her. But we can never really know everything about them, can we? And we bet there are quite a few things you do not know about Bragga. ,
Well, here are five things you need to know about Nadia that we bet you didn’t know.
Nakai is not her surname
She publicly goes by Nadia Nakai, so it makes sense that we would think Nakai is her second name, but it is not. Nakai is her middle name, and her surname is Kandava. Well, she was born Nadia Nakai Dlamini, but when she was 16 years old, she changed her surname to Kandava, which is her mother’s maiden name. But we have to say, Nadia Kandava and Nadia Dlamini don’t have quite the same ring as the alliteration in Nadia Nakai, do they?
Nadia was born in South Africa in 1990, but her mother is Zimbabwean. This explains the name Nakai, which is a pretty common name for girls in Zimbabwe, and means “be beautiful” in Shona. What a fitting name for her!
Nadia attended high school in Kenya. While she was there, she loved music by a female Kenyan rapper called Nazizi. She got her chance to meet Nazizi, and we imagine that whatever transpired in their conversation changed her life, as she owes it to Nazizi that she went on to become a rapper.
Bragga invested heavily in her rap career, but that did not mean neglecting her studies. Even after meeting her Kenyan idol and choosing to venture into rap music, she still went on to her tertiary education.
She has a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Communication and Media Studies at Monash University in Johannesburg. Kids, this is your sign to stay in school!
You may have suspected that Nadia works hard. After all, nobody gets to where she is in her career by being lazy. But we seriously doubt that you would accurately guess just how hard she works.
In 2018, while she was still signed under Cassper Nyovest’s label, he once told her he needed her album to go in a different direction – after it was completed. So Nadia had to hunker down and redo the whole album from scratch. But the end result turned out amazing – she and Cassper were a powerful team and everything they touched turned to gold.
Nadia’s impeccable work ethic is also the reason she has recently started her own record label, Bragga Records. Many speculated that she left Cass at Family Tree Records because they had beef, but it looks like that wasn’t the case.
Theirs is one of the most mutually loving and supportive working relationships in Mzansi, and Nadia respects the role Cass has played in her career so far. But the baby bird is grown enough to take flight now, and we are excited to watch her growth in this new venture.
She is at least partly responsible for the beef between Cassper and AKA
Cass and fellow rapper AKA have had beef for as long as most of us can remember, so much that at this point, we cannot even be sure what started it. But as Nadia revealed on Khuli Chana’s music talk show, The Originators, she believes she is at least part of the reason for the bad blood.
It happened in 2015 when AKA organised a group of female rappers to do a remix of his hit song Baddest, including Gigi Lamayne and Fifi Cooper. But he left out Nadia, who was then an upcoming star. Cass did not take kindly to the snub, and it drove him to take a keener interest in Bragga’s career – he has a soft spot for underdogs. As they say, the rest is history, as Nadia has now grown to unimaginable heights.
We bet AKA regrets the snub as the two are now rumoured to be dating. We have to wonder what this rumoured relationship must have done to her relationship with Cass, as AKA is still his sworn nemesis.
Well, there you have it. Do you feel like you know Nadia better? We certainly feel like we do. At least now we can drop the “Kandava” in a random conversation and feel like we are better than other Bragga fans, right?
