NLN is the rising Ottawa rapper who can do it all

Since 2020, NLN has put out one song a week. That's quite a catalogue of singles to rack up over the past two years, but what stands out more than the quantity of NLN's music is the quality: the Ottawa rapper has an uncanny ability to rap over any type of beat, and he never sounds out of place. Noeh-Lys Ndayishimiye can hop on everything including old-school hip hop, cloud rap, alt-pop, grime, R&B, and even drum and bass-style beats and deliver in full — and these are just his recent singles. 

Ndayishimiye's music lyrically chronicles the life of a 19-year-old with lofty aspirations — he sings on "Dwayne's Signature" about selling out the Rogers Centre — but who also deals with the daily minutiae of teenagedom: relationship woes, petty squabbles and figuring out his place in the world. 

In 2021, he started working with producer Rooftop, who loves Ndayishimiye's adaptability, and prefers working with an artist who he can make a plethora of different beats for rather than being stuck in one generic sound. He started releasing music when he was 17, teaching himself to use GarageBand to produce his tracks. 

There's something quite fascinating about this particular moment in music, when it's never been easier to produce songs at home. But for artists who have come up during the pandemic years, there hasn't been much opportunity to flex their live performance skills. At the time of this interview with CBC Music, Ndayishimiye had only performed live twice.

"So much satisfaction comes from finally seeing people enjoying my music and to see that what I'm doing is working," he said over Zoom from his studio space in Ottawa. "I was cooped up in my basement for so long."  

There's a growing audience in Ottawa for homegrown rap, and Ndayishimiye is riding that wave. He points to Night Lovell, an artist from the city with hundreds of millions of streams and international acclaim, as a symbol of success for the rest of the scene. Lovell's collaborator, Lindasson, is another rapper currently putting Ottawa on the map. 

CBC Music spoke with Ndayishimiye about his early musical influences, getting into songwriting by writing a diss track and why he makes music with the youth of Ottawa in mind.

What did you grow up listening to? 

My earliest musical memory is on Sundays when we had to clean the house. I'd be woken up by the sound of Rwandan gospel music playing. I feel like I have a natural ear for making Afro-inspired genres like dancehall and Afrobeats, like it's just embedded in me. My mom also played Brandy's album Human all the time, whenever we were in the car. It's my favourite album; it's my childhood. I wasn't really into rap growing up. I was just listening to the radio, so mostly pop music. I really loved listening to music in my free time and looking up songs I'd heard on the radio on YouTube.  

How did you discover hip hop?

It was only in 2016 that I really found hip hop through Chance the Rapper and Kendrick Lamar. I would look up their lyrics and become infatuated by the songwriting. Beforehand I hadn't really thought about lyricism on a deep level. As soon as I started to do that, then I was like, "OK, who else is good? Who else has this lyricism?" So then I would go and look at people who did freestyles on the radio.

I wanted to be able to rapidly rap like the artists I was seeing, but I didn't realize how hard it was until I actually tried. Being able to rap nonstop while being lyrically cohesive is a skill. I remember I was in my grandma's basement, and Juice Wrld was on Tim Westwood['s show] and he rapped for an hour without stopping. That was the first time I was amazed by rap stuff. He was coming up with everything on the spot, I felt like his thoughts rhymed because the flows came out with such ease. 

How did you get into songwriting? 

It just came from being inspired by seeing other people do it. The way I started recording music is actually a funny story. I wrote a diss track about my friend in high school. What happened is that my friend had beef with this other guy in our school and they were sending diss tracks back and forth. The other guy was losing, so I wanted to help him out. It wasn't my first time writing; I always wrote music for fun as a kid since I was like six or seven years old. So when I went to do a diss track, it wasn't new territory. I put it out, it did what it did and obviously I don't do diss tracks anymore but that's how I started recording music.

You've been releasing a song a week for over two years. At the beginning of this process, did you know you'd be going for this long? Or did it just happen organically?

I thought I was gonna be doing it for longer. I got the idea from Russ, the American rapper. He was the initial person to do a song a week and get successful. I saw an interview he did around the time when I was trying to figure out how to get myself out there and he said all it took for him to blow up was releasing a song a week. I was never scared of the work. I just wanted to get on and I already had that hunger. So like, putting out a song every single week didn't faze me. I thought that I was going to do it until I broke.

In terms of the varied sounds in the music that you've released, how do you keep this momentum and keep things fresh? I feel like it'd be so easy to put out a song a week and eventually run the risk of them sounding the same.

I think that's just how I make music. I didn't grow up around hip hop or rapping so I'm more used to listening to pop and R&B. I never went into the booth and I thought, "OK, I'm just gonna make straight rap music." Like you said, I feel like the song-a-week thing could become a little bit redundant, but it really works if you're versatile. Sometimes I feel like everything is in the subconscious. Sometimes when I make music, like it's not even me writing, it's like a higher power telling me to do something, where I make music, and I kind of black out. Sometimes, I don't even know what I'm making. I'm just experimenting and things turn out sounding good.

What is the hip-hop scene like in Ottawa?

It's a scene that's growing, to be honest. I remember being in high school and I'd hear about artists here and there but it was never really something that was solidified like Atlanta or even Toronto. Now, I guess people are growing up and you know, there are more influences and more reference points of success in the city, like Night Lovell or different artists like that. I feel like people are starting to gain the confidence to start making music and put it out there. 

Do you think Ottawa influences what you write about? 

I would say yes, because the inspiration that I draw from the city is wanting to inspire others. When I was younger, whenever I saw someone that was my age excelling, it motivated me in a bigger way than anyone else could. When I make music, a lot of the time I'm thinking about the youth of Ottawa, in particular, because I know that some of my success is going to inspire them because I'm from where they're from. I have an unreleased video and we shot it at the local Rideau Mall so that kids could see it and recognize the landmark as their home. We didn't end up dropping that one but I have a video for my song "Go out Sad" that was filmed in downtown Ottawa. 

How do you want to present yourself as an artist?

A lot of times people think that to make it in rap you have to sound like another person but that's not true, you should sound like yourself because everybody's an individual, with individual thoughts and experiences. I feel like I really do reflect that. I don't feel like I sound like anybody and I'm really just talking about my life. I'm not scared to be vulnerable in songs. I feel like vulnerability is another thing that people should take into account when they listen to my music. I'm not scared to talk about my feelings. I'm not trying to create a persona. I'm not trying to dress a certain way to please anybody. I'm just being authentically myself.