You know when you hear about a hot new artist before anybody does, and you convince yourself they are the next big thing and are gonna alter the musical landscape in the course of the next year? Well, it invariably leads to disappointment: either the debut album drops and flops, revealing that the weaknesses in your trendspotting savvy (see: Brother Reade, Tabi Bonney, Thunderheist, Cadence Weapon, et al). Or, alternately, the artist DOES blow up and you decide you don’t like them anymore, b/c EVERYONE likes them now (see: Kid Cudi, Wiley, Wale, et al.).

So, with that preface in mind, I’d like to introduce to next big thing in buzz bands, Nneka, who will TOTALLY change the landscape of music in the next year. Sounding like 2011, not-crazy-version-of-Lauryn Hill (with doses of MIA, the African dude from The Very Best, and every post-modern Afrobeat artist to have 4 seconds of fame in Western Europe) this German-Nigerian singer-rapper is mad hyphenated. Her new mixtape with J.Period, released to hype her US-full-length-debut coming out in 2010, is fried plantains. You can download it here.

-Henry