It can be hard to keep up with baile funk, the ferocious party music born in the ghettos of Rio de Janeiro at the dawn of the ’90s. The English language media’s coverage can be spotty, so unless you speak Portuguese or have personally gone clubbing in Brazil in recent years, you might not know that the baile funk scene is exploding right now.
The genre has come a long way since its first moment of worldwide exposure, when Diplo and M.I.A. dropped their collaborative mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism in 2005. The mixtape included three baile funk tracks simply labeled as “Baile Funk One,” “Baile Funk Two” and “Baile Funk Three,” by Brazilian artists who Diplo neglected to credit in the track list (this later caused some controversy over questions of mis-appropriation). Then there was the baile funk-influenced electropop group Bonde do Rolê, the Favela Booty Beats compilation from 2004, and the occasional mix from scene leader Sany Pitbull. The globally-minded Man Recordings have also been repping the genre abroad for a decade.
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Now, enter MC Bin Laden: the 22-year-old rapper from Sao Paolo who is at the forefront of a new generation of baile funk producers and MCs that includes MC Pikachu, MC Brinquedo and MC Don Juan. R&B star Kelela just tapped him to remix her track “Rewind,” which dropped this past fall via Warp Records. His bombastic, de-constructed version of the track is available as a free download thanks to Red Bull’s 20 Before 16 program which is offering a song a day. All new songs can be streamed starting at 12PM EST each day, and each track will also be available as a download with 1,000 digital copies available.
Grab that track here.
