Rap rhythm from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas causing a stir
First, Vitor Oliveira sold the ground floor of the bare-bones brick building he constructed near the top of his sprawling favela in Rio de Janeiro. Then he sold one of two second-floor apartments. Then his car.
It’s all for the music — for trap de cria, a new kind of hip-hop that evokes gang life in Rio’s favelas.
Oliveira, 31, plowed the proceeds into constructing a tiny recording studio and editing room in the building’s final apartment. He returns there from his job — driving his motorcycle taxi up and down Rocinha, one of Latin America’s largest slums — to work at churning out 18 tracks and accompanying videos.
Trap de cria (rough translation: “homegrown trap”) is the fresh sound of this and other favelas, and remains largely unknown outside of them. Featuring a lyrical flow over synthesized drums, it is an offshoot of Atlanta-style trap and speaks to the day-to-day struggles of hardscrabble hoods.
Except most of these rappers aren’t actual gangsters, though their millions of YouTube viewers wouldn’t know it from their videos that show them flaunting what appear to be real guns in working-class neighborhoods dominated by drug traffickers.
“Our weapon is our voice, our ammunition is our lyrics,” Filipe Toledo, who raps as Lidinho 22, said as he popped a magazine into a plastic airsoft gun. Then he aimed its muzzle at the camera. “Boom.”
Not everyone is a fan. Last year, Rio police launched an investigation into a video by Marcos Borges and Ivens Santos, 22-year-olds rapping under the names MbNaVoz and Dom Melodia. Police are looking into how they obtained SUVs and whether real guns were used. The clip has been viewed 4 million times.
Brazil’s civil police said that Borges and Santos face accusations of inciting crime and association with drug trafficking, and could be indicted for illegally carrying firearms if it’s confirmed they were real.
“Freedom of expression has a limit, and the limit is when a crime is committed. We understand a crime was committed,” police detective Allan Duarte told television channel SBT.
Borges looks the menacing part: He has an Uzi tattooed on his neck. But he dismisses official criticism.
“We have to portray what we live,” he said in an interview. “We can’t sing about a woman walking Copacabana’s sidewalk or skateboarding if we didn’t live that. I go out of my house and see crazy stuff all the time. You got me? That’s how it is in the favela.”