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May 25, 2005
Miami Bass Will Eat Itself
The Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats compilation on Germany's Essay Recordings is easily of the best CDs I've purchased all year. I should've suspected that this was going to be the case as soon as I saw the CD cover art....but that's probably a little beside the point. If you haven't heard about (or better yet, heard) the intoxicating dancefloor madness that is "Rio baile funk", you can read Douglas Wolk's short article from a December 2004 issue of the Village Voice and/or this Stylus Magazine review of the aforementioned compilation. Or if you need a napkin-sized executive summary, let's just say that Rio baile funk/favela booty bass/funk carioca/whatchamacallit is sort of like a 21st-century Brazilian twist on 80s electro and Miami bass, with lots of energetic Portuguese rapping thrown into the crazy raw-sounding mix.
One of the absolute wildest tracks on Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats is De Falla's "Popozuda Rock'n'Roll", a pretty hilarious and incredible song that almost sounds like a Brazilian rap group attempting to do a Miami bass version of the riff-heavy theme to Beverly Hills 90210. I like this song so much that not only have I made it a regular part of my recent DJ sets, but I got inspired to work out a blend between "Popozuda Rock'n'Roll" and one of its much older and far more commercially successful cousins from the opposite side of the extended Miami bass family tree. Yes, I'm talking about that undeniable party anthem "C'Mon N' Ride It (The Train)" by Quad City DJ's. In semi-accordance with today's prevailing naming standards of "<geographical region> <musical subgenre>", I am calling this mix "Quad City Baile Funk". You can download an MP3 of the mix here:
Quad City Baile Funk (4.78 MB)
Call it a mash-up if you absolutely must, but I actually mixed this one in real time and just recorded the results. I finally got my new external Audigy2 NX soundcard/soundsystem hooked up between my laptop and my mixer, so I'm hoping that this will be the first of many "mini-mixes" that I record and post online with some sort of regularity. A DJ Twombly mixtape will be coming out later this year, but until that happens, you can check out this blog and/or the podcast feed for periodic blends or random mixes or mini-sets that may or may not make it onto a final plastic CD product with which I am perfectly satisfied. My programmer posse out there may or may not recognize this as nothing more than a DJ-ing/mixtape-releasing version of the "Release Early, Release Often" model. In any case, it's making a lot of sense to me at the moment so I'm going to give it a shot...'cause the music world is movin' fast and the internet is goin' nuts and even something as new as a "Still Tippin'"/"P's and Q's" mix just isn't sounding nearly as fresh as I thought it did two months ago. So stay tuned for some variation of that and/or a bunch of M.I.A. mixes that I've been working on.
Posted by Tim at May 25, 2005 11:57 PM
Comments
I've been meaning to buy this.
Posted by: J. Crue at May 27, 2005 09:14 AM
Hey, mizta Tuba!!!! Thiz iz Edu K, i'm da writer n singer of POPOZUDA ROCK'N'ROLL track!!! Hey, i luvvvzzzz Quad City Djs n i'm mad bout da mix ya did! Pleaze, can ya contact me so ya could send me the mix? I'd like 2 let ya know 2 that in October my first single 4 Deutschland's Man Recordings of Popozuda Rock'n'Roll iz comin out n in February comes da full album! Thanx, man!
Posted by: Edu K at August 28, 2005 10:41 PM
this cd is absolutely amazing!!
it's about a new kind of musical explosion in Brazil: the FAVELA'S FUNK!
This music started up inside the dangerous Favelas in some private parties called "Batidão", and then it turned into a sort of a trendy, first in Rio de Janeiro, and then around the country.
Now, not only the "poorest" people from favelas go to paty inside, even the richest ones who like to have fun, come inside to hear and dance all night long the brazilian funk!
The lyrics sang by the brazilian mc's are crazy and you can listen to a lot of sex vocabulary, but it's all about partying, dancing, shaking asses, feel the hot and let us go.
there's a similar musical revolution in the african country Angola.. that's KUDURO! try it as well.
The biggest FUNK bands of the moment are TATI QUEBRA O BARRACO and BONDE DO TIGRAO. try them!!
greeting from Portugal !
Posted by: marta at December 20, 2005 11:23 AM
I really cannot belive! You like this kind of Brazilian music? Your're crazy!
That's the most ridiculous sound in Rio de Janeiro.
I fell ashamed when I see the Funk be divulged like a music of our Favelas and MAKE SUCCESS!!!
There's a lot of kind of good music in Rio... In our Favelas... But all that you (out of Brazil) know is the worst.
Do you know the Carioca Rock? Pop? Romantic music? Classic music?
I think no... Only you know is this excrement and that samba with naked womans that a lot of people insists to call music.
I'm sorry, but I fell bad thinking that the only tnihg that foreign know about Brazil Culture is this sheet!
Do you know that they sing music mativating the crime, the traffic and prostitution?
Posted by: Livia at June 13, 2006 08:00 PM