How good that would be, you could go back at this moment. To the moment of the first, untouched hearing. If, initially indifferent, you unexpectedly feel something. A sentence that strikes in depth. A tipsy hip-hop beat that sounds like it has been booming there for a long time. Do you look into the soul of this artist, as if through a keyhole? As an explorer, as a pioneer? It is quite impossible that such a feeling has already opened up to someone else.

Elena Witzeck

Editor in the feuilleton.

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In the next moment, it may be that voice, beat and band sound so young that you slow down the euphoria about the little cheeky words ("sippen" for slurping, "Melos" for melodies), about the wild images ("People go for a walk, and we go to the dogs"). And that, on the other hand, you have the feeling that there is more, that there must be more. Otherwise, she wouldn't come across as wise. And then it can be that you suddenly feel caught in the sense of Scott Fitzgerald, boat against the current, incessantly drifted towards the past.

Fans whose souls have also been touched

Under no circumstances do you want to know in such a magical first moment of getting to know each other whether the person singing there was already a celebrity in the past, i.e. as a child, and why, how many fans at what age she has on Tiktok and why and whether the "hype" that is written around her is justified. Not later either, but it's hard to do anything about that. You just want to keep listening and thinking ahead and delay reality a little longer.

Unfortunately, this moment of the first time is never longer than a song length, so in this case it is quite short. And unfortunately it cannot be reproduced, not even with several glasses of Lillet Wildberry.

So you go to the concert in the Columbiahalle in Berlin as a substitute and see the others. The fans, whose souls were also touched, who also believe that they have looked into the soul of Nina Chuba; the fans in Berlin are young, they have rosy faces, wear short tops, their hair in two nests on their heads, wide pants, they look like rebirths of the 2000s, which is confusing if you were their age at that time. They have friends with them and siblings and order Sprite, and then they huddle together very closely, and it smells of freshly bought viscose blends and chewing gum and the excitement of youth.

You can be happy to be here, it's so crowded, completely sold out. A year ago, she was already a Tiktok star, had recorded a few of her own songs with Felix Kummer and Provinz and was still magnanimously distributing interview appointments. Now it's tour, there are no more interviews and no tickets either. Supposedly not even a guest list for the folks at Sony, their record company. In August 2022, "Wildberry Lillet" came along, and Nina Chuba became really famous. She was at the Lollapalooza Festival, at Böhmermann, won the 1live crown as best newcomer and has now released an album, "Glas", produced by the likes of Aside, Dokii and Michael Burek. In the meantime, the next tour is already being advertised, which will probably be sold out again by the time you read this text.