A Timeline Of Brazilian Hip-Hop: From The Ruas To The Red Carpet
The timeline of Brazilian hip-hop leads to the 2023 Latin GRAMMYs, where several Brazilian hip-hop artists are nominated in the inaugural Best Portuguese-Language Urban Performance: Planet Hemp, Criolo, Filipe Ret, Luccas Carlos and Dallas.
|GRAMMYs/Nov 15, 2023 – 07:27 am
“Going downtown back then was like going to NY with all the lights, the buildings,” said Brazilian artist Mano Brown in the 2022 documentary Racionais MC’s: From the Streets of São Paulo.
In the 1970s, Brown was only known as Paulo, a teenager from one of the harshest favelas at the outskirts of the 20 million person Brazilian metropolis. Then taking baby steps into hip-hop — a brand new form of music-making — Brown could barely imagine becoming one of the most relevant figures in national culture. Nor would he dare to say that Brazilian hip-hop would go big on a global level.
There are three new categories at the 2023 Latin GRAMMYs, the inaugural award for Best Portuguese-Language Urban Performance. Among its nominees are two mainstays of Brazil’s hip-hop today: the ’90s rap-rock staple Planet Hemp’s collaboration with São Paulo sambista-rapper Criolo, “Distopia”; and Rio trapstars Filipe Ret and Luccas Carlos, along with top-tier producer Dallas, featuring “Good Vibe.”
Brazilian hip-hop has walked a long, rocky road from the tough favelas and skyscraping downtowns to the 2023 red carpet in Seville, which will host the 2023 Latin GRAMMYs on Nov. 16. It’s a story of many acts, a wide range of beats, clashes with the establishment and Black pride, genre-hopping creativity, and unstoppable endurance. As with samba and funk, innovative artists reinvented and reshaped the culture of hip-hop, claiming it as their own.
Follow through the decades of Brazilian hip-hop’s rise and and press play on some hallmark song from the country’s artists below:
