Nkechi Ka Egenamba known as Ninja is an English rapper and the female lead vocalist for the British indie band The Go! Team

The Go! Team

The Go! Team are a six-piece band from Brighton, England. They combine indie rock and garage rock with a mixture of blaxploitation and Bollywood soundtracks, double dutch chants, old school hip hop and distorted guitars similar to the style of Sonic Youth. Their songs are a mix of live...

. Doing a mixture of rapping, chanting and singing, Ninja is well known for her energetic stage performances and dancing. In 2005, NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

voted Ninja the 15th coolest person in music.

Early life and education

Born Nkechi Ka Egenamba in 1983, Nkechi is short for Nkechinyere, and means "what God has given" or "gift of God" in Igbo

Igbo language

Igbo , or Igbo proper, is a native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group primarily located in southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 20 million speakers that are mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent. Igbo is a national language of Nigeria. It is written in the Latin...

, the language of the Igbo people

Igbo people

Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...

, an ethnic group in West Africa, numbering in the tens of millions. Ninja is from London. Her father is Nigerian and a lawyer, and her mother is half-Egyptian, half-Nigerian. Ninja is one of five children and was brought up in a very strict household. She had been studying at the university before she joined The Go! Team.

The Go! Team

Ninja became lead singer for the The Go! Team after founder Ian Parton created the first The Go! Team album in the studio. With Ninja, the live band became a "separate entity" to the original studio vision, as the performances became radically different from the recordings, particularly due to Ninja's freestyled vocals contrary to the sampled vocals present on the album. Parton acknowledged that Ninja had become the "face of the band" in an interview with Erik Leijon in September 2007.

Non-Go! Team efforts

Ninja cowrote and performed on Simian Mobile Disco tracks Its The Beat and Hot Dog from SMD's debut album Attack Decay Sustain Release

Ninja cowrote and performed on the track Time Machine by French band Rinocerose.

She cowrote and performed on the Cut Chemist track The Audience is Listening.

Albums

• Thunder, Lightning, Strike
  Thunder, Lightning, Strike
  Thunder, Lightning, Strike is the debut album by The Go! Team. It was released on British label Memphis Industries in 2004 and was nominated for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize....
  
  (2004) #48 UK
• Proof of Youth
  Proof of Youth
  Proof of Youth is the second studio album by Brighton band The Go! Team. It was released on September 10, 2007 in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States.-History:...
  
  (2007) #21 UK, #142 US, #1 UK Indie
• Rolling Blackouts
  Rolling Blackouts
  -Track listing:...
  
  (2011)

Singles

• "Junior Kickstart" 7", 12" and CD single (2003)
• "The Power Is On" 12" Single (2004)
• "Ladyflash" 7" and CD Single (2004) #68 UK
• "Bottle Rocket" 7" and CD Single (2005) #64 UK
• "Ladyflash" (re-issue) 7" and CD Single (2006) #26 UK
• "Grip Like a Vice
  Grip Like a Vice
  "Grip Like a Vice" is a single off the album Proof of Youth by The Go! Team. It was released on July 9, 2007 on Memphis Industries. It was released as a CD single and was also released on two limited edition coloured vinyl singles. It reached number 57 on the UK Singles Chart and ranked at number...
  
  " Single (2007) #57 UK
• "Doing It Right" Single (2007) #55 UK, #3 UK Indie

EPs

• Are You Ready for More?
  Are You Ready for More?
  Are You Ready for More? The Go! Team Australian Tour EP is an EP released by The Go! Team in 2005. Aside from "Bottle Rocket", none of the tracks from this EP are included in the original release of the band's debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike, though in the expanded re-release both "Hold Yr...
  
  (Australian Tour EP) (2005)
• Audio Assault Course (College Radio Sessions) (2006)
• Step and Repeat (8 Track EP) (2006)

Featured on

• Public Service Broadcast #3 (2004) (Compilation album
  Compilation album
  A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...
  
  )
• Help: A Day in the Life (2005) (Compilation album)

External links

• Little Brown Ninja - Ninja's blog
• The Go! Team - official website
• Memphis Industries: The Go! Team - UK label-operated band website
• The Go! Team - Titanic Fandalism - Unofficial Go! Team Fansite