Major! NTS deploys a sprawling, heads-fwd selection of São Paulo's maddest contemporary funk machinations: hybridided dancefloor eccentricity that splices squirmy Afro-Portuguese bumps and MC yawps with snatches of drill, hard techno, electro-house, trance and blown-out 8-bit chirps. Educate yrself - this is some of the most dizzying, dynamic club music we've heard in ages.
São Paulo is a churning, cultural cement mixer of a city, bursting with diverse influences that spring from its patchwork of ethnic groups. While there are millions of local Brazilians of Portuguese and African descent, there are also huge communities with roots in Japan, Italy, Greece, China and elsewhere. And the city has a particular way of absorbing these elements and mutating them into something entirely new; Brazilian funk emerged from the favelas in the 1980s, an intoxicating cocktail of imported American sounds like Miami bass, electro and rap that cut raw, sampled rhythms and vocal loops with jolting MC performances and locally-sourced melodies. Since then, it's evolved considerably: when the 'Planet Rock' beat cross bred with maculelê (a Bahian stick dance) and music from the West African-influenced Candomblé religion, tamborzão materialized, giving contemporary Brazilian funk its unmistakable rhythmic template. And in the last decade, funk has gone from strength to strength, splitting into countless variations as huge block parties demanded their own unique flavor and new party drugs stimulated different sonic experiences.
NTS has been supporting contemporary Brazilian funk for years, and called in journalists Jonathan Kim and Felipe Maia to assemble 'funk.BR São Paulo', a 22-track guide to the capital city's vital funk mandelão sound. While funk itself was cultivated in Rio, funk mandelão, a lascivious, heavy and often minimal variation, is something São Paulo can call its own. You might have come across DJ K's 'PANICO NO SUBMUNDO' that surfaced on Kampala's Nyege Nyege imprint last year, spotlighting the genre's carnivalesque bruxaria strain, and there's plenty more to dig through beyond that. The problem for non-lusophones outside of Brazil is that while the material itself is easy to find on SoundCloud, YouTube or TikTok, it can be difficult to swim through the deluge of remixes and variations and even harder to find English language guides. 'funk.BR' is a useful primer, that sets cuts from breakthrough artists like DJ Arana and DJ Blakes (whose YouTube stats often stretch into the millions) against material from icons like Mu540, DJ Tonia (aka Maffalda) and Deekapz, and crucial gear from innovators like DJ Lorrany, DJ Dayeh, DJ P7 and of course DJ K himself.
DJ Arana's absurd 'Montagem Phonk Brasileiro' provides an early highlight, disrupting drill with grotesque psychedelic effects - one of funk mandelão's most identifiable hallmarks - and lurching into an almost beatless stretch that hacks breathless raps over a blown-out ringtone and wheezing, high-pitched synth wobbles. There's so much going on here it's hard to pull apart at first: the on-the-two synth blip isn't a million miles from donk, and Arana's cavernous MC calls situate us in peak mandelão, but then there's nods to syrup-laced Memphis rap, and Lança Perfume-powered bruxaria. Darker and far more menacing, DJ P7 and MC PR's 'Automotivo Destruidor' foregrounds MC PR's haunted murmur, juxtaposing it with comedic whistles and a woody beat that feels as if it could snap your neck. Then DJ Pablo RB repurposes a metallic blog house lead, interspersing the ear-pummeling clangs with saturated, freeform raps from Vitu Único, Vini do KX and JD, who trade bars back and forth, rarely pausing for breath. Unsurprisingly, it's DJ K who throws one of the biggest curveballs, teaming up with DJ Knote and a gaggle of MCs on 'Me Viu no Fluxo ZS' to split ghostly synth flutes and pounding dungeon 4/4 kicks with Super Mario FX and brain-curlingly pitch-wonked wails.
He's not the only producer repping the bruxaria sound here either: DJ Léo da 17 drives it into a brick wall on 'Bruxaria de Extrema Periculosidade', layering machine-strength beats with crippling distortion and almost suffocating the MCs. Deekapz meanwhile reps the hypnotic ritmado style on 'Ritmado Mágico no Sumarézinho' sprinkling chimes and whistling fanfares around steppy hand drums that eventually call back to Brazilian funk's electro roots. And DJ Lorrany's brilliantly titled 'Mandela Cunt' needs to be heard to be believed, a chaotic chatter of samples that spiral into twitchy brilliance, braiding 808 Mafia's rising trap synth with tree frog croaks and the beloved 'The Ha Dance' crash. There's a level of humor embedded in the funk genre that keeps it completely fresh and cheekily irreverent. These producers and MCs manage to whizz a wider world of cultural blips and coughs into music that's long been the global club scene's sharpest edge, and they do it with all the disrespect that made punk so fucking vital in its earliest days. Utterly essential biz... do not sleep, OK?
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Major! NTS deploys a sprawling, heads-fwd selection of São Paulo's maddest contemporary funk machinations: hybridided dancefloor eccentricity that splices squirmy Afro-Portuguese bumps and MC yawps with snatches of drill, hard techno, electro-house, trance and blown-out 8-bit chirps. Educate yrself - this is some of the most dizzying, dynamic club music we've heard in ages.
São Paulo is a churning, cultural cement mixer of a city, bursting with diverse influences that spring from its patchwork of ethnic groups. While there are millions of local Brazilians of Portuguese and African descent, there are also huge communities with roots in Japan, Italy, Greece, China and elsewhere. And the city has a particular way of absorbing these elements and mutating them into something entirely new; Brazilian funk emerged from the favelas in the 1980s, an intoxicating cocktail of imported American sounds like Miami bass, electro and rap that cut raw, sampled rhythms and vocal loops with jolting MC performances and locally-sourced melodies. Since then, it's evolved considerably: when the 'Planet Rock' beat cross bred with maculelê (a Bahian stick dance) and music from the West African-influenced Candomblé religion, tamborzão materialized, giving contemporary Brazilian funk its unmistakable rhythmic template. And in the last decade, funk has gone from strength to strength, splitting into countless variations as huge block parties demanded their own unique flavor and new party drugs stimulated different sonic experiences.
NTS has been supporting contemporary Brazilian funk for years, and called in journalists Jonathan Kim and Felipe Maia to assemble 'funk.BR São Paulo', a 22-track guide to the capital city's vital funk mandelão sound. While funk itself was cultivated in Rio, funk mandelão, a lascivious, heavy and often minimal variation, is something São Paulo can call its own. You might have come across DJ K's 'PANICO NO SUBMUNDO' that surfaced on Kampala's Nyege Nyege imprint last year, spotlighting the genre's carnivalesque bruxaria strain, and there's plenty more to dig through beyond that. The problem for non-lusophones outside of Brazil is that while the material itself is easy to find on SoundCloud, YouTube or TikTok, it can be difficult to swim through the deluge of remixes and variations and even harder to find English language guides. 'funk.BR' is a useful primer, that sets cuts from breakthrough artists like DJ Arana and DJ Blakes (whose YouTube stats often stretch into the millions) against material from icons like Mu540, DJ Tonia (aka Maffalda) and Deekapz, and crucial gear from innovators like DJ Lorrany, DJ Dayeh, DJ P7 and of course DJ K himself.
DJ Arana's absurd 'Montagem Phonk Brasileiro' provides an early highlight, disrupting drill with grotesque psychedelic effects - one of funk mandelão's most identifiable hallmarks - and lurching into an almost beatless stretch that hacks breathless raps over a blown-out ringtone and wheezing, high-pitched synth wobbles. There's so much going on here it's hard to pull apart at first: the on-the-two synth blip isn't a million miles from donk, and Arana's cavernous MC calls situate us in peak mandelão, but then there's nods to syrup-laced Memphis rap, and Lança Perfume-powered bruxaria. Darker and far more menacing, DJ P7 and MC PR's 'Automotivo Destruidor' foregrounds MC PR's haunted murmur, juxtaposing it with comedic whistles and a woody beat that feels as if it could snap your neck. Then DJ Pablo RB repurposes a metallic blog house lead, interspersing the ear-pummeling clangs with saturated, freeform raps from Vitu Único, Vini do KX and JD, who trade bars back and forth, rarely pausing for breath. Unsurprisingly, it's DJ K who throws one of the biggest curveballs, teaming up with DJ Knote and a gaggle of MCs on 'Me Viu no Fluxo ZS' to split ghostly synth flutes and pounding dungeon 4/4 kicks with Super Mario FX and brain-curlingly pitch-wonked wails.
He's not the only producer repping the bruxaria sound here either: DJ Léo da 17 drives it into a brick wall on 'Bruxaria de Extrema Periculosidade', layering machine-strength beats with crippling distortion and almost suffocating the MCs. Deekapz meanwhile reps the hypnotic ritmado style on 'Ritmado Mágico no Sumarézinho' sprinkling chimes and whistling fanfares around steppy hand drums that eventually call back to Brazilian funk's electro roots. And DJ Lorrany's brilliantly titled 'Mandela Cunt' needs to be heard to be believed, a chaotic chatter of samples that spiral into twitchy brilliance, braiding 808 Mafia's rising trap synth with tree frog croaks and the beloved 'The Ha Dance' crash. There's a level of humor embedded in the funk genre that keeps it completely fresh and cheekily irreverent. These producers and MCs manage to whizz a wider world of cultural blips and coughs into music that's long been the global club scene's sharpest edge, and they do it with all the disrespect that made punk so fucking vital in its earliest days. Utterly essential biz... do not sleep, OK?
Major! NTS deploys a sprawling, heads-fwd selection of São Paulo's maddest contemporary funk machinations: hybridided dancefloor eccentricity that splices squirmy Afro-Portuguese bumps and MC yawps with snatches of drill, hard techno, electro-house, trance and blown-out 8-bit chirps. Educate yrself - this is some of the most dizzying, dynamic club music we've heard in ages.
São Paulo is a churning, cultural cement mixer of a city, bursting with diverse influences that spring from its patchwork of ethnic groups. While there are millions of local Brazilians of Portuguese and African descent, there are also huge communities with roots in Japan, Italy, Greece, China and elsewhere. And the city has a particular way of absorbing these elements and mutating them into something entirely new; Brazilian funk emerged from the favelas in the 1980s, an intoxicating cocktail of imported American sounds like Miami bass, electro and rap that cut raw, sampled rhythms and vocal loops with jolting MC performances and locally-sourced melodies. Since then, it's evolved considerably: when the 'Planet Rock' beat cross bred with maculelê (a Bahian stick dance) and music from the West African-influenced Candomblé religion, tamborzão materialized, giving contemporary Brazilian funk its unmistakable rhythmic template. And in the last decade, funk has gone from strength to strength, splitting into countless variations as huge block parties demanded their own unique flavor and new party drugs stimulated different sonic experiences.
NTS has been supporting contemporary Brazilian funk for years, and called in journalists Jonathan Kim and Felipe Maia to assemble 'funk.BR São Paulo', a 22-track guide to the capital city's vital funk mandelão sound. While funk itself was cultivated in Rio, funk mandelão, a lascivious, heavy and often minimal variation, is something São Paulo can call its own. You might have come across DJ K's 'PANICO NO SUBMUNDO' that surfaced on Kampala's Nyege Nyege imprint last year, spotlighting the genre's carnivalesque bruxaria strain, and there's plenty more to dig through beyond that. The problem for non-lusophones outside of Brazil is that while the material itself is easy to find on SoundCloud, YouTube or TikTok, it can be difficult to swim through the deluge of remixes and variations and even harder to find English language guides. 'funk.BR' is a useful primer, that sets cuts from breakthrough artists like DJ Arana and DJ Blakes (whose YouTube stats often stretch into the millions) against material from icons like Mu540, DJ Tonia (aka Maffalda) and Deekapz, and crucial gear from innovators like DJ Lorrany, DJ Dayeh, DJ P7 and of course DJ K himself.
DJ Arana's absurd 'Montagem Phonk Brasileiro' provides an early highlight, disrupting drill with grotesque psychedelic effects - one of funk mandelão's most identifiable hallmarks - and lurching into an almost beatless stretch that hacks breathless raps over a blown-out ringtone and wheezing, high-pitched synth wobbles. There's so much going on here it's hard to pull apart at first: the on-the-two synth blip isn't a million miles from donk, and Arana's cavernous MC calls situate us in peak mandelão, but then there's nods to syrup-laced Memphis rap, and Lança Perfume-powered bruxaria. Darker and far more menacing, DJ P7 and MC PR's 'Automotivo Destruidor' foregrounds MC PR's haunted murmur, juxtaposing it with comedic whistles and a woody beat that feels as if it could snap your neck. Then DJ Pablo RB repurposes a metallic blog house lead, interspersing the ear-pummeling clangs with saturated, freeform raps from Vitu Único, Vini do KX and JD, who trade bars back and forth, rarely pausing for breath. Unsurprisingly, it's DJ K who throws one of the biggest curveballs, teaming up with DJ Knote and a gaggle of MCs on 'Me Viu no Fluxo ZS' to split ghostly synth flutes and pounding dungeon 4/4 kicks with Super Mario FX and brain-curlingly pitch-wonked wails.
He's not the only producer repping the bruxaria sound here either: DJ Léo da 17 drives it into a brick wall on 'Bruxaria de Extrema Periculosidade', layering machine-strength beats with crippling distortion and almost suffocating the MCs. Deekapz meanwhile reps the hypnotic ritmado style on 'Ritmado Mágico no Sumarézinho' sprinkling chimes and whistling fanfares around steppy hand drums that eventually call back to Brazilian funk's electro roots. And DJ Lorrany's brilliantly titled 'Mandela Cunt' needs to be heard to be believed, a chaotic chatter of samples that spiral into twitchy brilliance, braiding 808 Mafia's rising trap synth with tree frog croaks and the beloved 'The Ha Dance' crash. There's a level of humor embedded in the funk genre that keeps it completely fresh and cheekily irreverent. These producers and MCs manage to whizz a wider world of cultural blips and coughs into music that's long been the global club scene's sharpest edge, and they do it with all the disrespect that made punk so fucking vital in its earliest days. Utterly essential biz... do not sleep, OK?
Major! NTS deploys a sprawling, heads-fwd selection of São Paulo's maddest contemporary funk machinations: hybridided dancefloor eccentricity that splices squirmy Afro-Portuguese bumps and MC yawps with snatches of drill, hard techno, electro-house, trance and blown-out 8-bit chirps. Educate yrself - this is some of the most dizzying, dynamic club music we've heard in ages.
São Paulo is a churning, cultural cement mixer of a city, bursting with diverse influences that spring from its patchwork of ethnic groups. While there are millions of local Brazilians of Portuguese and African descent, there are also huge communities with roots in Japan, Italy, Greece, China and elsewhere. And the city has a particular way of absorbing these elements and mutating them into something entirely new; Brazilian funk emerged from the favelas in the 1980s, an intoxicating cocktail of imported American sounds like Miami bass, electro and rap that cut raw, sampled rhythms and vocal loops with jolting MC performances and locally-sourced melodies. Since then, it's evolved considerably: when the 'Planet Rock' beat cross bred with maculelê (a Bahian stick dance) and music from the West African-influenced Candomblé religion, tamborzão materialized, giving contemporary Brazilian funk its unmistakable rhythmic template. And in the last decade, funk has gone from strength to strength, splitting into countless variations as huge block parties demanded their own unique flavor and new party drugs stimulated different sonic experiences.
NTS has been supporting contemporary Brazilian funk for years, and called in journalists Jonathan Kim and Felipe Maia to assemble 'funk.BR São Paulo', a 22-track guide to the capital city's vital funk mandelão sound. While funk itself was cultivated in Rio, funk mandelão, a lascivious, heavy and often minimal variation, is something São Paulo can call its own. You might have come across DJ K's 'PANICO NO SUBMUNDO' that surfaced on Kampala's Nyege Nyege imprint last year, spotlighting the genre's carnivalesque bruxaria strain, and there's plenty more to dig through beyond that. The problem for non-lusophones outside of Brazil is that while the material itself is easy to find on SoundCloud, YouTube or TikTok, it can be difficult to swim through the deluge of remixes and variations and even harder to find English language guides. 'funk.BR' is a useful primer, that sets cuts from breakthrough artists like DJ Arana and DJ Blakes (whose YouTube stats often stretch into the millions) against material from icons like Mu540, DJ Tonia (aka Maffalda) and Deekapz, and crucial gear from innovators like DJ Lorrany, DJ Dayeh, DJ P7 and of course DJ K himself.
DJ Arana's absurd 'Montagem Phonk Brasileiro' provides an early highlight, disrupting drill with grotesque psychedelic effects - one of funk mandelão's most identifiable hallmarks - and lurching into an almost beatless stretch that hacks breathless raps over a blown-out ringtone and wheezing, high-pitched synth wobbles. There's so much going on here it's hard to pull apart at first: the on-the-two synth blip isn't a million miles from donk, and Arana's cavernous MC calls situate us in peak mandelão, but then there's nods to syrup-laced Memphis rap, and Lança Perfume-powered bruxaria. Darker and far more menacing, DJ P7 and MC PR's 'Automotivo Destruidor' foregrounds MC PR's haunted murmur, juxtaposing it with comedic whistles and a woody beat that feels as if it could snap your neck. Then DJ Pablo RB repurposes a metallic blog house lead, interspersing the ear-pummeling clangs with saturated, freeform raps from Vitu Único, Vini do KX and JD, who trade bars back and forth, rarely pausing for breath. Unsurprisingly, it's DJ K who throws one of the biggest curveballs, teaming up with DJ Knote and a gaggle of MCs on 'Me Viu no Fluxo ZS' to split ghostly synth flutes and pounding dungeon 4/4 kicks with Super Mario FX and brain-curlingly pitch-wonked wails.
He's not the only producer repping the bruxaria sound here either: DJ Léo da 17 drives it into a brick wall on 'Bruxaria de Extrema Periculosidade', layering machine-strength beats with crippling distortion and almost suffocating the MCs. Deekapz meanwhile reps the hypnotic ritmado style on 'Ritmado Mágico no Sumarézinho' sprinkling chimes and whistling fanfares around steppy hand drums that eventually call back to Brazilian funk's electro roots. And DJ Lorrany's brilliantly titled 'Mandela Cunt' needs to be heard to be believed, a chaotic chatter of samples that spiral into twitchy brilliance, braiding 808 Mafia's rising trap synth with tree frog croaks and the beloved 'The Ha Dance' crash. There's a level of humor embedded in the funk genre that keeps it completely fresh and cheekily irreverent. These producers and MCs manage to whizz a wider world of cultural blips and coughs into music that's long been the global club scene's sharpest edge, and they do it with all the disrespect that made punk so fucking vital in its earliest days. Utterly essential biz... do not sleep, OK?
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Major! NTS deploys a sprawling, heads-fwd selection of São Paulo's maddest contemporary funk machinations: hybridided dancefloor eccentricity that splices squirmy Afro-Portuguese bumps and MC yawps with snatches of drill, hard techno, electro-house, trance and blown-out 8-bit chirps. Educate yrself - this is some of the most dizzying, dynamic club music we've heard in ages.
São Paulo is a churning, cultural cement mixer of a city, bursting with diverse influences that spring from its patchwork of ethnic groups. While there are millions of local Brazilians of Portuguese and African descent, there are also huge communities with roots in Japan, Italy, Greece, China and elsewhere. And the city has a particular way of absorbing these elements and mutating them into something entirely new; Brazilian funk emerged from the favelas in the 1980s, an intoxicating cocktail of imported American sounds like Miami bass, electro and rap that cut raw, sampled rhythms and vocal loops with jolting MC performances and locally-sourced melodies. Since then, it's evolved considerably: when the 'Planet Rock' beat cross bred with maculelê (a Bahian stick dance) and music from the West African-influenced Candomblé religion, tamborzão materialized, giving contemporary Brazilian funk its unmistakable rhythmic template. And in the last decade, funk has gone from strength to strength, splitting into countless variations as huge block parties demanded their own unique flavor and new party drugs stimulated different sonic experiences.
NTS has been supporting contemporary Brazilian funk for years, and called in journalists Jonathan Kim and Felipe Maia to assemble 'funk.BR São Paulo', a 22-track guide to the capital city's vital funk mandelão sound. While funk itself was cultivated in Rio, funk mandelão, a lascivious, heavy and often minimal variation, is something São Paulo can call its own. You might have come across DJ K's 'PANICO NO SUBMUNDO' that surfaced on Kampala's Nyege Nyege imprint last year, spotlighting the genre's carnivalesque bruxaria strain, and there's plenty more to dig through beyond that. The problem for non-lusophones outside of Brazil is that while the material itself is easy to find on SoundCloud, YouTube or TikTok, it can be difficult to swim through the deluge of remixes and variations and even harder to find English language guides. 'funk.BR' is a useful primer, that sets cuts from breakthrough artists like DJ Arana and DJ Blakes (whose YouTube stats often stretch into the millions) against material from icons like Mu540, DJ Tonia (aka Maffalda) and Deekapz, and crucial gear from innovators like DJ Lorrany, DJ Dayeh, DJ P7 and of course DJ K himself.
DJ Arana's absurd 'Montagem Phonk Brasileiro' provides an early highlight, disrupting drill with grotesque psychedelic effects - one of funk mandelão's most identifiable hallmarks - and lurching into an almost beatless stretch that hacks breathless raps over a blown-out ringtone and wheezing, high-pitched synth wobbles. There's so much going on here it's hard to pull apart at first: the on-the-two synth blip isn't a million miles from donk, and Arana's cavernous MC calls situate us in peak mandelão, but then there's nods to syrup-laced Memphis rap, and Lança Perfume-powered bruxaria. Darker and far more menacing, DJ P7 and MC PR's 'Automotivo Destruidor' foregrounds MC PR's haunted murmur, juxtaposing it with comedic whistles and a woody beat that feels as if it could snap your neck. Then DJ Pablo RB repurposes a metallic blog house lead, interspersing the ear-pummeling clangs with saturated, freeform raps from Vitu Único, Vini do KX and JD, who trade bars back and forth, rarely pausing for breath. Unsurprisingly, it's DJ K who throws one of the biggest curveballs, teaming up with DJ Knote and a gaggle of MCs on 'Me Viu no Fluxo ZS' to split ghostly synth flutes and pounding dungeon 4/4 kicks with Super Mario FX and brain-curlingly pitch-wonked wails.
He's not the only producer repping the bruxaria sound here either: DJ Léo da 17 drives it into a brick wall on 'Bruxaria de Extrema Periculosidade', layering machine-strength beats with crippling distortion and almost suffocating the MCs. Deekapz meanwhile reps the hypnotic ritmado style on 'Ritmado Mágico no Sumarézinho' sprinkling chimes and whistling fanfares around steppy hand drums that eventually call back to Brazilian funk's electro roots. And DJ Lorrany's brilliantly titled 'Mandela Cunt' needs to be heard to be believed, a chaotic chatter of samples that spiral into twitchy brilliance, braiding 808 Mafia's rising trap synth with tree frog croaks and the beloved 'The Ha Dance' crash. There's a level of humor embedded in the funk genre that keeps it completely fresh and cheekily irreverent. These producers and MCs manage to whizz a wider world of cultural blips and coughs into music that's long been the global club scene's sharpest edge, and they do it with all the disrespect that made punk so fucking vital in its earliest days. Utterly essential biz... do not sleep, OK?