Many years ago I was recording in Kris Jenkins studio in Cardiff when he started playing some Brazilian music that Gruff from Super Furry Animals had brought back from a favela party he’d been to whilst on tour over there. I loved the music and used to drop a few of the higher quality ones in my sets, a few months later people like Diplo started to make the Funk Carioca (or Baile Funk, Favela Funk) sound popular over here for a while also.
To be honest I haven’t really kept up to date with what’s happening in that scene since back then but recently I’ve been checking out 2 YouTube channels in particular, Canal KondZilla. home to prolific video producer KondZilla, and GR6 Explode. The channels are pushing the latest school of artists such as MC Kevinho, MC Livinho, MC Pedrinho (are you starting to see a bit of a trend here), MC Davi, MC João and even MC Bin Laden. Now I’m not even certain if the music has a new name by now, I can find very little info about any of these artists in English and my only Portuguese is from living on Jersey about 20 years ago, where lots of the other workers were from Madeira, but the music itself has definitely moved on. A lot of the music reminds me of early Grime, or the newer minimal stuff which Mumdance has been putting out, there’s also influences from Trap and RNB, although Favela Trap is another thing yet again.
To be honest the videos are generally not really to my taste, it’s the typical materialistic and misogynistic affair, and I’m guessing the lyrics probably aren’t much better, but in terms of music and energy, I just can’t get enough of this stuff at the moment. Here’s a few current favourites.
AAA BADBOY 