From Duki’s 'fronteo' (“swagger”) and Bizarrap’s hits to Nicki Nicole’s sensuality: a new wave of urban music from Argentina is making its mark, with a litter of under-30 artists giving a voice to a generation raised online while “freestyling” as a school.
There is also María Becerra, Emilia Mernes, Milo J or Trueno as examples of a group of musicians combining hip hop, trap, reggaeton, pop and electronic music. These artists have consolidated themselves as the most popular Argentine musicians with hundreds of millions of monthly plays online while selling out packed shows.
They are part of a new burst of artists born around 2000, who have lived with the Internet ever since they can remember. For many of them, their common language was rap battles, which exploded on social networks during the long lockdown caused by the Covid-19 virus.
A century ago, tango made its way into the world. Fifty 50 years ago, a national rock movement flourished in Argentina, becoming a beacon for Latin America. A new era has now arrived.
“Trap, through [freestyle rap] battles, generated the breeding-ground and audience for another creative explosion,” said Dano, acknowledged by many artists as one of the pioneers on the scene.
“To go down and rap on the square you only need to do so, that democratised access to that kind of dreams,” the Spanish-based rapper said in an interview.
Dano is speaking at Buenos Aires Trap, a festival which in December drew 50,000 people on each of its two days. Most there were aged under 30, with tattoos and smartphones pointing at the sky.
Touching the sky
In the 2010s, Argentina witnessed the peak of freestyle battles, where two or more contenders duel by improvising rap.
One such competition, El Quinto Escalón (2012-2017), was the trigger for the scene: famous artists such as Duki, Lit Killah, Trueno, Paulo Londra, Wos and Ysy A all started there.
The battles, which took place in a park in Buenos Aires, were uploaded on YouTube and soon followed by thousands of youngsters.
Duki was the first to take off to make his own music. Today his songs have been played hundreds of millions of times, and he has collaborated with such artists as Bad Bunny or Wiz Khalifa and in 2024 his show’s 65,000 tickets were sold out at the Bernabéu stadium in Spain in a matter of hours.
“There are those with talent and those without talent, and then there are prodigies. Mauro [Duki] is a prodigy, like [football icon Lionel] Messi,” rapper MKS, one of the artists with the most wins at El Quinto Escalón, said in an interview.
In his lyrics, both Duki and other artists resort to 'fronteo' or “swagger.” They boast of their rags to riches stories, with a rhetoric connecting with the aspirations of a generation.
In Argentina today, some 60 percent of youths aged 15 to 29 are poor, according to official data from the INDEC national statistics bureau.
"I sign my cheques, and I earned my cheques. A flat in Miami, a house for mum, the rest is all spent,” raps Duki in ‘Nueva era,’ his collaboration with Puerto Rican Myke Towers, the song with which he opened his concert at the latest Buenos Aires Trap festival. He wore a purple Adidas outfit and a shiny chain around his neck.
Online fame
In 2017, a follower from El Quinto Escalón started to remix battles on his YouTube channel. He called himself Bizarrap, and then invited the rappers he admired to record one-off sessions in his house. He would appear in the videos, normally with his back turned, wearing a cap and sunglasses.
As of today, Bizarrap’s sessions have been played billions of times on YouTube and his collaborations with such artists as Quevedo and chart-topper Shakira are among the most popular hits in the world online.
‘Biza’ was not the only one who reached fame online and using social media as a launching pad. Nicki Nicole uploaded her first video on YouTube in 2019 and two years later she would play that very song again, ‘Wapo traquetero,’ on the Jimmy Fallon show in the United States, reaching millions of people.
Something similar happened with María Becerra, who went from uploading comic skits on YouTube to appearing on the soundtrack of the Fast and Furious saga and collaborating with Paris Hilton.
“From day one, when all those artists came out of battles, they had a song, on day two they already had two managers, and on day three they had all signed with a label, then on day four they were already doing shows,” explained Dano.
According to MKS, “an increasingly giant industry will be created,” with new artists joining previous ones. “It’s like a wheel which keeps spinning around.”
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by Tomás Viola, AFP
