James BKS Honors West Africa’s Nana Benz With Drill-Bikutsi Anthem ‘Na Na Benz’

French Cameroonian artist-producer James BKS returns with “Na Na Benz,” a single that foregrounds history as much as rhythm. The track pays tribute to the Togolese women traders popularly known as the Nana Benz, who became influential distributors of Dutch wax fabrics across West Africa from the 1940s through the 1980s.

By centering their story of agency, entrepreneurship and cultural authorship, James BKS positions the song as both a salute and a primer, aimed at listeners who may be encountering this chapter for the first time. He extends the homage visually as well, co-directing the accompanying video with David Moerman to underscore the narrative of ownership and ingenuity that defined the Nana Benz era.

Musically, “Na Na Benz” fuses the taut momentum of drill with the polyrhythmic vocabulary of Cameroonian bikutsi, an approach consistent with James BKS’s Afro–hip-hop signature. Written and composed by the artist and co-produced with Roark Bailey (whose engineering and production credits span Playboi Carti to SAINt JHN), the record emphasises percussion, prowling low-end and chant-like vocal lines that function as refrains.

The blend aims to mirror the Nana Benz blueprint while translating it into a contemporary club framework. It’s an interpretive choice that may invite debate: pairing a celebratory, dance-ready chassis with a weighty social and economic legacy is ambitious, and part of the interest here lies in how effectively the production holds those two impulses together.

“Na Na Benz” also sets up the next phase of a busy release cycle. The single announces See Us Rise And Win, a deluxe version of James BKS’s seven-track May 2025 EP See Us Rise, arriving December 10. That project, co-produced with JoA Touch and Roark Bailey, threaded West African rhythms through contemporary hip-hop and afropop while exploring themes of self-empowerment, temptation and resilience.

It followed the two-part debut album ‘Wolves of Africa’, which featured collaborations with will.i.am, Q-Tip, Idris Elba, Little Simz and others, and drew support from outlets including BBC Radio 1, Vogue, NME and Rolling Stone. Within that continuum, “Na Na Benz” reads as a concise statement of purpose: heritage rendered in present tense, using groove and narrative to bridge audience familiarity gaps while extending James BKS’s tri-continental palette from Cameroon to the wider global stage.