Various - Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats Album

From http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2084-rio-baile-funk-favela-booty-beats/:

A cursory listen to Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats might give you the impression that Rio de Janeiro is one big, happy ass-humping utopia, which it is, for a first-class Third World clusterfuck. Carnival is Mardi Gras-St. Patty's-Freaknik-Spring Break-Fuck Your Town Up After the Big Victory-madness. The national soccer team commands the pitch like the cast of West Side Story. Surfing, samba, white-sand beaches loaded with brown-skinned sex machines. And has anyone met an ugly Brazilian? How about a mopey one? Yeah, me neither. But if you read about the conditions in Rio's favelas-- Gestapo-y police tactics, unchecked drug trafficking, pre-teen death squads, and a mind-boggling homicide rate among people age 15-24-- poppin' that booty suddenly becomes a Thriller dance for the woefully begotten.

You're forgiven if you want to ignore socio-economics and just shake your dumper because that's the real aim here. As future U.N Deputy Secretary-General Lil' Jon stated in a recent interview, "People just like to party. The economy is fucked up. There's war going on. People don't want to think about all of that shit. People want to relieve all of that stress and tension." In a city where the haves frolic on beaches below the hillside shantytowns of the have-nots' do morro, the party is on full blast. It's Miami circa-'86 to the Extreme down there, kids, and there are no big record contracts to save anyone from the slum.

The prevailing sound of favela funk is the 808 bass. It's the basis of every song, so if you don't like it, don't bother. Some tunes color it with traditional instrumentation like the accordion-tinged "Pavaroty" or the horn blasts of "Bate La Palme De Mao", but for the most part, samples and synth flashes are just window dressing for the low end. One noticeable exception is "Jonathan II" which has the Mario Bros. freaking the keys like Wendy and Lisa with a kid hard-spitting Portuguese rhymes. By "kid", I mean a 9-year-old, and it doesn't sound like he's riffing on Iesha or at the playground, you know? He sounds pissed, which places him neatly within the oeuvre of favela mc'ing, in which the ability to sound menacing supersedes all other qualities. The most amusing example occurs on "Toma Juizo" when the soft-voiced member of the duo conspicuously gravels his vocal during the chorus to match the gruff of his partner.

Most of Favela Booty Beats' cuts are pleasant renderings of 80s Miami bass if taken separately, but the dated and relatively tame selection robs the music of its all-out party intentions. Diplo's Favela On Blast mix approximated the vibe, and various online mp3 mixtapes are google-fresh. In comparison, RBF: FBB (like that?) feels like a Pier 1 Import of ghetto world music.

With American hip-hop stomping its Goliath footprints in the world's urban ghettos throughout the last decade-- and with increasingly diverse offspring in Europe and Africa-- favela funk may be the most startling descendant. Seizing on the nihilism of gangsta rap and the escapism of Southern bass, it is a disquieting manifestation of a truly desperate faction of Brazilian society. With all that is broken in the segregated narco-slums of Rio, Sao Paolo, and the rest of Brazil's metropolises, the favelados are making the most unhinged club music on the planet. Hopefully, future compilations will better translate the feeling.