A brief guide to Latino rap

Hip hop culture often involves boastful battle raps liberally sprinkled with improvised insults and wordplay. However, rap has become an important cultural expression in other parts of the world, as it mutates, expands and adapts to the realities of every neighborhood it reaches, producing new conversations and visions about rap itself.

Right from the start, American rap permeated Latino culture through television, show business, humor and comedy. Rap songs like Memo Rios’ El cotorreo (1979) and Perucho Conde’s La cotorra criolla (1980) are two good examples. The rhymes, messages and rhythmic beats of rap offered spaces to develop identity, unity and resistance.

Yet from Argentina to Tijuana and beyond, rap artists hold onto certain codes and dynamics so that followers can settle sometimes trivial matters like crowning their generation’s best MC or freestyle champion, or agreeing that a group is still keeping it real even after so much success.

However, some people say that over the last 20 years, hip hop culture has diverged significantly from its Anglo origins and has formed regional spaces with political and social themes particular to the streets of Colombia, Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico. It’s no wonder that local rap music is often called “the most believable newscast in the neighborhood.”

Latino rap is as diverse as its artists and uses a language dubbed, expanded and transformed by its transnational journey beyond US borders. The bling and boastfulness of American rap recede into the background during this journey so that Latino rappers can help us understand our identity through words and rhythms.

The diversity of Latino rap grew out of the mainstream as grassroots performers put their eminently local imprint on the music. Superstars emerged and projected the Latin American identity with conviction and courage through powerful rhymes, phrasing, technique and lyrical intuition.

Something for everyone

Late to the party, poser music, poor quality – these are some of the frequent criticisms of Latino rap over the last 20 years. But it takes time and perseverance for a culture to develop its own voice, and Latino rap today speaks of a quest and an evolution that is much more genuine than a crude translation of an American genre to a Latino context.

Some are using rap to make sense of current social crises in Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador, and to develop distinct local styles in Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Argentina. What would Latino rap be without the Brooklyn-to-Puerto Rico journey of Vico C, without the Panamanian naughtiness of El General, or without the playful daring of Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas? It may be a stretch to say that without that collective regional identity, perhaps there would be no Latino rappers like Norick (Peru), Lil Supa (Venezuela) and Aczino (Mexico), the legendary Spanish-language freestyler.

Poetic, intuitive and sometimes alarming, Latino rap is in good health. It maintains a safe distance from the latest fads of a wounded music industry, yet still manages to refresh and challenge it.