Brazilian funk, at least out on the radical, thrilling, ear-frying, brain-scrambling fringes, is primarily a producer's genre. It's not that the songs are mostly instrumental. Vocals are a critical part of the sound, the defining examples being the endlessly repeated stabs of short words or phrases—"Vai, vai"; "Toma, toma"; "Fode, fode"; "Pega, pega"; "Vuk vuk" (maybe don't look up what those last few mean in English if you're at work)—that basically are to funk what the hi-hat triplet is to trap. In addition to those stock adlibs and the omnipresent DJ drops, funk tracks typically feature at least one and usually a few vocalists rhythmically croaking out verses beneath the chirps and blares and clangs of the beat, and certain sub-scenes, like funk ostentação, are in fact rapper-centric.
Nevertheless, vocals are primarily a resource for the funk DJ/producer. You can see this even in how the music is made. Listen to enough funk, and you'll inevitably find a verse you first encountered in one song showing up elsewhere, and potentially several different elsewheres. This is because the custom is for rappers to upload a cappellas online for free, which DJs then take and edit as they please. The consistency of funk's rhythmic patterns makes this kind of splicing together of various verses pretty seamless, and there's no stigma to reusing a good a cappella that someone else has gotten to first. But as is their approach to music more generally, funk producers love to deconstruct vocals and play with parts. DJ Ramemes mentioned in an interview once that rappers are sometimes annoyed when they learn he's used one of their verses for a song, as he is prone to snip out all but a couple choice lines, distort them, rearrange them, and weave the frayed strands into his frenzied aural tapestries. And Ramemes is closer to the norm in funk, where the DJ is almost always sovereign.
All of that is to say, I'm not usually too enthused by funk projects where the vocalist has a starring role. Most of my favorite funk songs do indeed feature MCs, but the raps almost always function as essentially another instrument, just a sound the DJ utilizes in service of the surrounding sonic chaos. Hearing traditional vocals over funk beats reminds me of an old problem from 2007, when artists were rapping over tracks from J Dilla's Donuts and the LA beat scene, almost always to forgettable effect. Like back then, there's usually so much going on with the music that there's not enough room for the vocals to stand alongside it as equal, complementary partners, and so the sum tends to be less than the parts.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when I heard Logo Mania, the new collab EP from DJ Saze and MC Ktrine (pronounced "kah-TREE-nee"), which I cannot stop listening to. DJ Saze is the man behind the music, and he acquits himself more than adequately. The beats here are primarily in the style of ritmada, a sub-subgenre of funk mandelão, and they knock about as hard, though not quite as abrasively, as you'd expect from a stellar funk effort. But the real star this time is MC Ktrine.
Where many rappers struggle to find space for their verses within a funk beat and therefore wind up just splattering their words on top, creating verses that are something closer to competitors than complements to the beat's groove, Ktrine was seemingly born to find funk pockets and own them. DJ Saze's production definitely helps, as ritmada is a style that naturally lends itself to vocalists thanks to it being a little (and only a little! this shit still slaps like Wyatt Earp!) smoother and less ornate than what you'd find in one of the more vertigo-inducing corners of baile funk. But it's Ktrine's voice that steals the show in the way it both connects with and elevates the underlying soundscapes.
The word that comes to mind when I think about why Ktrine's rapping works so well is dynamism. Ktrine constantly flits through modes and demeanors, from cool and controlled to bold and impassioned, from resolutely monotone to freely climbing up and down the scales, sometimes picking up and casting off new approaches within a single line. She mostly sticks to trap's trademark triplet flow, but the ways she plays with her deliveries and timing and departures from it makes it all feel fresh and distinctively her. If it's too premature, blasphemous, or America-centric to liken her talent and expressiveness to an early Nicki Minaj, then we're perhaps safer pointing out how she's following in a very similar lane to fellow funk standout, Kyan.
As someone who doesn't speak Portuguese, I'm of course missing lots of the particulars of her lyrics and wordplay. This is unfortunate, because you can tell that Ktrine is a serious, colorful writer. As she spoke about in an interview with the podcast Cenacast, Ktrine comes from the tradition of conscious rap, the Brazilian version of which is similar to but not quite as didactic as the American original. She talks in a different interview about being inspired to write by poetic turns of phrases from her main funk heroes MC Bob Boladão and MC Magal, and her own desire to express her perspective as a person from the downtrodden, overlooked areas on the outskirts of Sao Paulo (she's from Mauá). Even through translation, you can see these influences.
The conceit of Logo Mania is young people's obsession with their favorite fashion brands. Each song title refers to a specific brand or product, from the obligatory Oakleys ("Bonde da Ó," which roughly translates to "Oakley Gang") to the Ecko Red line of clothes ("Caça Rinoceronte," or "Rhinoceros Hunting") to Adidas's Springblade shoes (simply enough, "Springblade"). This isn't empty materialism, though. Ktrine's verses are mostly about the role fashion plays in a person's everyday life, whether it be the pleasure of putting on your best outfit for a night out with your friends or the way a young person from the favelas might channel their aspirations for a better life through their yearning for a wardrobe they can't currently afford. As an admittedly washed American, I take particular pleasure in hearing trendy but still accessible brands mentioned here, which takes me back to the days before rap traded Acuras and Polo for Lamborginis and Versace. Or, as Ktrine herself puts it on "Bonde da Ó," "We're from the hood, we don't wear designer." In addition, Ktrine often makes direct reference to her blackness in her lyrics, expressing a pride and confidence that isn't always nurtured within the complicated racial politics of Brazil, which, though progressive in many ways, still tends to look down on dark-skinned people, women especially.
Lest any of that sound too weighty or heavy-handed, it's important to know that the overall feeling of the music is extremely fun. Again, it goes back to the sonics. The music is bouncy, bubbly (literally), and danceable, and for the most part Ktrine is talking her shit about her skills on the mic and how fly she is with a panache that is unmistakable even across the language barrier.
Maybe because of how dark the music tends to be—and how the rappers are oftentimes spitting into the void, keeping time with the standard "boom cha cha" rhythm, wholly unaware of what, if any, actual sounds their a cappellas will eventually be laid over—many funk vocalists lead with a gravely baritone and a fairly rigid flow. Obviously this works well most of the time, as the a cappella-splicing norm has helped propel this exhilarating, thriving genre. But the higher pitch of Ktrine's voice offers her an advantage. She doesn't try to restrict her vocals to the mucky lower registers, where funk's sounds tend to dwell, which in theory would "fit" best with your typical funk beat. Liberated, Ktrine is able to find within the music a place for her voice, her lyrics, and her personality that is all her own.
That instinct to find her own place, combined with her confidence and dynamism, is what powers her talent, allowing her to add something truly unique, separate to, yet still perfectly enmeshed with the beat. Where other rappers might either wrestle with the beat or see themselves dissolved inside, Ktrine is always dancing with it. And even if I don't understand a lick of the language, I could still listen to the always beautifully sonorous and sibilant Brazilian Portuguese all day. (It's when the popular energy drink is pronounced "Hedgy Boo" that it really gives me wings.)
Logo Mania is brief (only seven songs across 18 total minutes), but it packs a hell of a wallop. As someone who often seeks from funk that blissfully dazed feeling of a metaphorical punch to the head, this makes the EP one of the best funk projects I've heard in a while. For once, it's the MC who has knocked me out this time, and I'm excited to see MC Ktrine repeat the feat in the future.
