Ninho opens up in his Netflix documentary about the attack he survived at 14
In the Netflix documentary he co-produced, French rapper Ninho speaks for the first time about the attack at 14 that left him buried alive and badly injured.
Ninho rarely gives interviews and almost never shares personal stories. In the Netflix documentary he co-produced, Ninho: le prix à payer ("The Price to Pay"), released on 4 November, he finally opens up. One story stands out: the day he nearly died as a teenager.
What happened?
Ninho grew up in Essonne, a département south of Paris. At 14, he says, clashes with boys from a neighbouring area had become routine. "Sometimes we'd go to their school, grab the first one who came out... and boom boom boom," he recalls.
One day, after yet another run-in, a whole gang burst out of a van. "Before we realised, they'd opened the doors: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight..." he says. He tried to escape into the forest but was caught and beaten by 12 teenagers. "The first blow, the second, the third, a stone, something. Then my brain... everything went black."
How did he survive?
A friend says in the film that he was stabbed, hit with a screwdriver, had all his teeth broken, and was buried. Then, by chance, a school class on an orienteering outing found him.
Firefighters rushed in. They told his parents that if he had stayed underground another hour, he would have died. His mother, a nurse, remembers a broken nose and a skull fracture, which worried the doctors most. Ninho says he had 71 fractures inside the skull.
He also describes waking up in hospital, in a room where he couldn't see his own face. "Everyone who came in made a face," he says.
Who is Ninho today?
His real name is William Nzobazola, and he is one of the best-selling artists in France. His albums Comme prévu, Destin and Jefe, and his mixtape M.I.L.S., have sold millions of copies. He has 8.6 million monthly listeners on Spotify and has twice sold out the Stade de France, with songs about street violence, drug dealing and a hunger for revenge.
The film's directors, Thibaut de Longeville and Yanis Tiliouine, followed him from 2022, including during very private moments such as his father's funeral.
