The thing that has most consistently awed me as I've plunged into Brazilian funk is just how deep the genre is. In its earliest days, funk really was just about as simple as one particular rhythmic sample laid atop existing dancy hits. But the genre's explosion since then has been downright Cambrian, incorporating new rhythms and constantly birthing new styles, oftentimes finding growth by devouring techniques and characteristics from musical traditions within and outside of Brazil—a voracious cultural cannibalism that would make Oswald de Andrade and Caetano Veloso proud. For the uninitiated, funk's enormity and perpetual churn may seem intimidating, like hearing about a nice swimming hole, heading over for a leisurely dip, only to find yourself before raging whitewater rapids. But what I've learned is that if you're willing to make the leap of faith and dive right in, you will not be disappointed by the wild ride it takes you on.
Sure, I have probably lost multiple decades of lifetime aural functionality by playing this gloriously damaging music at dangerous volumes for hours and hours, and my every doctor's appointment threatens to include a trip to the ER before I get a chance to explain why my heart now beats to the rhythm of tamborzão, and while I have come to learn about 18 words of Portuguese, the bulk of them are merely synonyms for various reproductive organs. Nevertheless, I have loved getting swept along in funk, going on a journey that has led me to places I never would've imagined, many of which I wouldn't have even thought I'd like so much before getting there. With that in mind, I figured I'd share some of the things I've come across recently, to maybe help guide a curious fellow traveler.
Minttt do Grelão's Mixtape da Prensa Hidráulica is what made me realize I had to write a new funk blog. The first time I listened to it, it was unlike anything I'd ever heard. I've previously likened the experience of listening to funk to a jackhammer going off in your ear, but the titular metaphor of Minttt's project is an even better descriptor of her music's impact: having your skull shattered and the contents therein mashed into a gooey paste by a hydraulic press of sound. I promise that's a good thing.
If you are a particularly adventurous music listener, or already know that your taste buds tingle to heavy dollops of experimental genres like noise and industrial, then I welcome you to hop right in with this mixtape and let Minttt's music do its thing. (Though if you find yourself looking for more information about it and her, it's important to note that "do grelão" is NOT a last name and you should NOT Google those two words if you are at work or in public.) But if you, like me, are not quite as accustomed to very, very out-there music, then I think I know a way to help ease you in. The first time I listened to Mixtape da Prensa Hidráulica, I was in a state of intrigued bewilderment for most of it. Which makes sense. It's hard to muster many coherent thoughts when your head is in the process of being smashed to bits, especially if you're not used to the sensation. It took getting to "Liberdade Trade Mark" for me to realize just how into it all I was.
"Liberdade Trade Mark" makes for a good entry point. It's less aggressively abrasive than most of the rest of the album, and in fact is quite simply a beautiful piece of music. At the same time, it incorporates much of the genre fluidity, meticulous sound design, and gorgeous strangeness that makes the mixtape so amazing. It was repeatedly playing "Liberdade," wanting to stay in the world it created, that kept bringing me back to the mixtape, and helped open me up to its related, though far more caustic, pleasures.
You may notice that "Liberdade" isn't even obviously a Brazilian funk song. This is indicative of both Minttt's talent and her aims with this project. Listeners' heads aren't the only thing she's feeding into her hydraulic press. Vocals, speech clips, individual sounds, and even entire genres are but fodder for Minttt to distort, demolish, blend, and then gleefully reassemble in barely recognizable form, like some kind of beat-making Dr. Frankenstein turning the disparate parts into marvelous little musical monsters. To the extent that it makes much sense to talk about genre here, it's only to note that Mixtape da Prensa Hidráulica's approach is to emphasize the pliability and recombinational possibilities of genres, be they popular, experimental, or anything in between.
So while an individual song like "Liberdade" isn't that notably funky, there is plenty of funk to be found elsewhere on the mixtape. "Hoje Eu Vou Zoar" is the closest thing to straight-ahead funk, with its canonical rhythms and its appropriately start-stop rap verse. But even there Minttt perverts the traditional to make something new and her own—the kick-drum runs that give the tried-and-true rhythms a palpitating new energy, the slathered static, the absurdist yelps and squeals, the spacey breakdown sections between the more standard funk chunks. It's recognizably funk, but funk unlike what anybody else is doing.
My favorite of the funk-forward songs is "O Último Desliga a Luz," which is the most complete realization of Minttt's genre-spanning ambitions. Like "Hoje Eu Vou Zoar," it's easy to spot its funk fingerprints, which seamlessly combine with the noise elements and the chaotic digital beauty of "Liberdade Trade Mark." My favorite song overall, though, is "Cidade Maravilhosa." It's a legitimately incredible feat of musical storytelling. From the strobing alarm-clock chime that opens the track, to the skittering twinkles and blaring train horn that sound like a person scrambling to get ready and heading off to work, to the scuffed-up vocal samples that catch snatches of everyday conversations and newscast snippets and belligerent assholes and street-side soapbox revolutionaries and preachers mid-sermon, to some chimpmunked singing that calls to mind a late-night live show, to an abrupt comedown from all the druggy chaos, the song takes you on a breakneck journey through a day in the life of your typical Rio de Janeiro resident. Through the song, Minttt is able to reproduce the feeling of modern life in the big city, in all its overwhelming, beautiful, frightening, thrilling glory. And she pulls it all off in the span of just 123 seconds.
To step back for a second, the title of "Hoje Eu Vou Zoar" gets at a key component to the mixtape's appeal. "Today I'm Going to Mess Around" is how Google Translate puts it in English, though "zoar" has further, suggestive connotations: to play, to tease, "to emit a loud, buzzing, and confused sound." Minttt is clearly very serious about her musical chops, and the album is interested in more than just getting your skull to crack and your ass to shake. Political overtones abound, from the criticism of Rio's rampant sex tourism on "Turismo Sexual," to the fuck-the-police sentiment of "Os Porcos Tão No Cio" ("The Pigs Are in Heat" in English), to the subtler lyrics and vocal samples throughout, which reference or demonstrate society's omnipresent sexism. But like the best avant-garde art of any medium, Mixtape da Prensa Hidráulica knows how important it is to make all of this fun. The entire mixtape is a shining example of how playful experimentalism can be, and how importance does not always imply self-importance.
Minttt herself put it well in an interview about the mixtape, describing it as a "humorous, cynical body of work" that also "in a way, [is] quite political." The true essence, though, is something else: "But overall, it’s sonically fun, you know?" That right there is funk in a nutshell: humorous, cynical, political, and most of all, extremely fun.
I had to stipulate above that Mixtape da Prensa Hidráulica sounded like nothing I'd ever heard at the time I first listened to it, because since then I've sought out other experimental funk albums that would do to my head what losing that telekinesis duel did to the guy in Scanners. Luckily, I found just that in the form of Marcelinho MeteBala's album, Quebradeira Pura. It's hard to come up with a more succinct description of the zaniness of the album than this Rate Your Music review by user BlindTortureIll: "this is what the internet actually sounds like."
Marcelinho MeteBala's music may not be quite as punishingly harsh as Minttt's, but it is similarly culturally omnivorous and rhythmically addling. As it pertains to funk, Marcelinho's approach is at once traditional and radical. Like a lot of the earliest funk music, Marcelinho is all about demonstrating the transformative effect of funk's customary stampeding rhythms when placed atop existing songs and samples. What makes this all radical is how Quebradeira Pura mounts these rhythms and sends them trampling all over the entirety of the internet.
As such, Marcelinho's work incorporates many of the sounds and styles that will be familiar to the extremely online set, but repurposed to new ends. "Mochila Nas Costa/Death by Gazamour" epitomizes this, with its video-game soundtrack base, its cocaine-cut-with-Adderall pace, its omnipresent, tinnital reverb, it's sped- and pitched-up vocals, its plunderphonic layering of nostalgia-evoking samples, and the calculated surrealism of its overall tone. It then takes all of that stuff and adds to it typical funk a cappellas and both the tamborzão and beatbox beats, stamping a quintessentially Brazilian seal on the otherwise disproportionately Anglophone and West-centric internet culture. If there was a dial-up modem sound for the 5G age, it would sound like Quebradeira Pura.
In that way, it's interesting how this album contributes to the greater battle between Brazilian funk and (Brazilian) phonk, confronted most directly on Halc DJ's Bruxaria Não É Phonk. If phonk is the soulless, algorithmic, speciously worldly sound of the worst parts of the internet, one that pillages unique cultures like Brazil's and adds it to its textureless slurry, then Quebradeira Pura offers a more human, intentional, embodied vision of what the internet can sound like at its best.
Speaking of Halc DJ, he's back this year with a new album, O Ultimo Criativo. Like Bruxaria Não É Phonk, his new album is also concerned with matters of genre, this time replacing Bruxaria's revanchist protection of funk's territory for a full-on expansionary attack, staking funk's claim over the entirety of EDM, and crowning himself as the emperor of the land. The album is ultimately successful, though not quite to the extent Halc intended.
As a title like The Last Creative would imply, Halc uses this album as a showcase for the wide range of his talents, while simultaneously demonstrating funk's own ability to mesh with and even elevate other genres. He does so by dabbling in all sorts of different dance music traditions from track to track, incorporating the other EDM subgenres' traditions with his funk mandelão touchstones. Hints to which EDM styles he's playing with can be found in the track titles, which run the gamut from hard techno to dubstep to jungle and beyond.
Many of the album's strongest tracks are proof of Halc's concept that all of this stuff can and should be combined, mixing the prettiness of, say, house music with the grime of funk to mesmerizing effect. Songs like "Beat Selva" and "Mlk da Noite" are in that way real testaments to Halc's virtuosity, seen in his masterful weaving of dance and funk strands together, creating something that feels like it pushes all of electronic music forward. But other times, especially when he leans more into EDM than funk, the results are a little limp. The 20-song, hour-long project at times feels bloated, the merely solid EDM tracks weighing down the truly killer stuff, most of which hews in the funk direction.
One transition here is particularly illustrative. "Rabiscadão" is Halc at his funky best, a hard-as-nails bruxaria track that builds slowly before assailing you with tuim and exploding bubbles and cracking snares, every 20 seconds or so bringing some new sonic element that somehow gets your head bobbing even more violently than before. After that song's energy has brought you to the brink of hurling your cast-iron skillet through your microwave door (sorry, I'm very often listening to this stuff while doing the dishes), you then come to "Afro Explicito," a perfectly listenable song in its own right, one that successfully marries its dance and funk elements, but which nevertheless doesn't really make you feel anything. O Ultimo Criativo proves that Halc is a good-enough producer to make good-enough versions of all types of dance music. It also proves that he is an outstanding producer of funk, and the album is at its best when he brings EDM influences into his world of funk, rather than when it's the other way around.
Now, if you're looking for another good but overlong exploration of subgenre, DJ Alexia's Foda-Se has you covered. Following in the footsteps of Caio Prince, Alexia has teamed up with a slew of producers to collaborate on an album's worth of remixes to her hit song from last year, "Dissolução Subversiva." Foda-Se is therefore a collection of "Dissolutions of X," the X standing in for various other music styles, many of them subgenres of funk.
It speaks well of funk's depth that you can listen to what is essentially the same song over and over again for a good while (though it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to listen to all 21 tracks in a single sitting) and still be entertained. While Halc DJ (who himself lends a hand here with "Dissolução do Rock") sought to show off his expansive skills by traversing the entirety of EDM, Alexia shows that you can do the same thing just from within funk itself.
From the influences of industrial, techno, plunderphonics, noise, gabber, and other electronic genres heard in all the albums above, you can see how contemporary Brazilian funk is often in direct conversation with its EDM cousins. American rap music is also one of funk's closest relatives, and so it's no surprise to find funkeiros reaching North for more related stuff to funkify. Nobody does this better or more directly than DJ Blakes.
Blakes's 2024 album Mandelãoworld, which remains one of my very favorite funk projects, was an exercise in proving that funk, itself deeply influenced by rap's trap subgenre, could one-up its more internationally renowned relative. Blakes did so by sampling heavily from Travis Scott's Astroworld, demonstrating funk and trap's affinity for one another and also making the case that funk is even better. A few months ago, Blakes returned to the same well, this time using Playboi Carti's I Am Music as the takeoff point for his own album, Funk.
About half of Funk samples songs from Music, and oh my god, the results are insane. It's funny to think about how loud and discordant Carti's rage music is (rightfully!) considered to be in the context of popular music, and to then hit play on "Beat Psicodélico," which makes "Pop Out," its source, sound like elevator music. (Yet more kudos for Halc DJ, who co-produced that one.) I am a huge Carti fan, but I didn't find myself particularly called to return to I Am Music after my first couple plays. It seemed to lack the verve and inspiration of Carti's groundbreaking earlier albums, an impression that wasn't helped by its turgid 77-minute runtime. Funk, in contrast, is anything but a chore to get through. Across just 10 songs and 23 minutes, Blakes will have you feeling like you've gnashed through an entire roll of aluminum while smashing your forehead through every plate in your cupboard (sorry, I'm still mentally doing the dishes), and it will be the most invigorating part of your day. Rage may be the cutting edge of what American rap is producing nowadays, but funk is capable of tearing it to ribbons.
Due to the prevalence of funk posers like myself, it should be no surprise that the Western music industry, too, has cast its covetous eye upon Brazil. More and more you're seeing funk starting to go pop up north. Sometimes it's for a thirsty bit of wave-surfing, like when the Weeknd tapped Anitta for a forgettable song on his latest album. Sometimes it's enjoyable, like when PinkPantheress got Caio Prince and Adame DJ to make a cool little remix for her. Predictably, the most interesting example of Westernized funk comes from the underground, in the form of Xavisphone's new album, balança e paixão.
Xavi is an American producer who has sought release from the mainstream music industry in the freer, more creatively fulfilling world of Brazilian funk. After gaining success early in his career in trap and R&B—most prominently in the form of a couple placements on Ariana Grande's Positions—he found himself stifled by the constraints of the mainstream and quickly decamped. His latest success has come from more subterranean positions, with his forays in Brazilian funk.
Balança e paixão is a really strong work, and is practically the ideal of what you could expect from Americanized funk. It no doubt helps that Xavi has Brazilian familial roots, and has spent lots of time in the country. You can feel his bone-deep comfort in the genre, something that is conspicuous in its absence from most American-produced funk, which almost never transcends mere imitation.
But while all the songs on this album certainly knock—a sort of mellower, more melodic take on funk BH—you still can't help but notice the difference between Xavi's clean exactness and most Brazilian funk's messy urgency. In terms of things like mixing and structure, balança e paixão is far more orderly and traditionally accomplished than most of what you've read about in this article. This gives the songs a polish that both helps and hurts. It's nice to put this on in the car, crank up the volume, and notice how well balanced all the highs, mids, and lows are—hardly a given in this genre, where it's not uncommon to come away with the feeling that some songs were "mixed" off of shoddy headphones. However, this professional sheen loses much of the loose, frenetic spirit of funk, the impression that the producer opened Ableton with about 31 ideas in mind, several of them hilariously random, and rushed to cram them all into a single 2-minute song before the inspiration faded. The straightforward, right-thinking feel of this album is in strong contrast to the playfulness so evident in Minttt's mixtape. Xavi's album will definitely get you to screw your face, but it won't make you laugh—not a deal-breaking lack, but a lack nonetheless.
If the albums I've talked about here stand for anything as a group, it's the idea that Brazilian funk is so capacious as to be almost indefinable, and yet is still somehow identifiable in a shared approach, a sensibility. Funk at its best will blow your mind and hurt your ears, will get your neck snapping and your ass moving, and it will also get your brain thinking and your belly heaving in laughter. It's one of those things you can't really describe, but you'll know it when you hear it. And once you hear it, it'll be all you want to listen to.
