The latest iteration of funk carioca.

Brazil’s favelas have long been a source of brilliant, frenetic street music, and São Paulo’s charismatic joker MC Bin Laden is at the forefront of its latest wave: funk proibidão (or “strongly prohibited”), an even more pared-down take on funk carioca.

MC Bin Laden – real name Jefferson Cristian dos Santos Lima, stage name a canny move to capitalise on the success of his 2014 single ‘Bin Laden Não Morreu’ – is to bring the sound of funk proibidão to True Panther with his debut EP for the label, É Grau, to be released on May 12. Its six tracks will include three of MC Bin Laden’s breakout hits – the explosive ‘Bololo Haha’, on which gunshots and sirens are ruptured by flutes, and the clanking, clattering ‘Ta Tranquilo Ta Favorável’.

Ahead of the EP’s release, MC Bin Laden will be bringing São Paulo’s fluxo parties – where funk pribidão has grown – to New York on April 29, when Venus X, Asmara and Sicko Mobb will join him at Red Bull Music Academy’s Fluxo: Funk Proibidão party at Villain.

Venus X and Asmara have been heavily repping the sound of late. In February, the pair released the Putaria Maxima Volume 1 mix (featuring MC Bin Laden), combining “the sounds of the American ghetto and the Brazilian favela”, and followed it with an EP of the same title in March comprising five funk proibidão edits of US rap hits.

Watch the video for the É Grau EP’s title track and find the tracklist below.

Tracklist:

01. ‘Vai Virar Puteiro’ [feat. MC 2K]
02. ‘Ta Tranquilo Ta Favorável’
03. ‘É Grau Olha pra Traz e da Tchau’
04. ‘Aham, Pode Pá’
05. ‘Bololo Haha’
06. ‘Ombrinho com Romano’

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