January 10, 2005

MUSTAFA YODA: Love for the improvised rhyme
By Juan Data

(original versión of this article was published in the magazine Hip Hop Nation #53)

Freestyle, or the art of improvisational rhyming, arrived late to the universe of hip hop en español, when rap – in it’s traditional form and more commonly known- had expanded and was more accepted as a musical genre. The history of the Argentinean scene didn’t vary much from the rest. In the late 90’s many people had the word “freestyle” on their lips, but as soon as they got behind the mic, they’d only spit memorized rhymes therefore leaving the competition invalid. This continued until there appeared on the scene, as if out of nowhere, a cat named Mustafá, who no one knew, but within a few months gained the reputation of being the best and the first – Argentinean freestyler.

The gesture of the myth

It was ’99 and everyone in the hip hop scene in Buenos Aires was talking about a super group that was coming with enough force to sweep up established hip hop. In their origins they were not just a rap group, they were like a “dream-team” of a different species, in which you could find Rasta, the most known graph writer in Argentina, Apolo, the most famous break-dancer, and Mustafá, the undisputed champion of freestyle. From that first trio germinated La Organización, who we ran a piece on in society section of Hip Hop Nation number 9 as the great promise of the underground hip hop scene in Argentina. La Organización, however, remained an unfulfilled promise, and from that project all that was left were unofficial pirated copies of their recordings in local stores: a little before finishing what would become their debut cd; Mustafá abandoned the group to dedicate himself to his solo career and freestyling.

“I’m a screwed up dude, complicated,” confesses Mustafà, “I knew I had to be a solo artist. When I left La Organización, more than ever I went even more towards the free styling side of it. I knew I had to really get down with free styling”. Of course at that time, the scene in Argentina was still in diapers when it came to freestyling – it would still be a few years before Eminem’s movie would push all the cats in the barrios to improvise rhymes on the corners, and because of that Mustafà began building the expansion of the genre pushing MC’s of the new generation to develop their freestyle and undo their competition. “I went out to look for competition, and I had to invent the competitors”.

Sweating the metronome in South America

In a search for new freestylers, resulted the formation of Sudamétrica: “What I was looking for when I left La Organización was to form a crew of freestylers, and I knew that there would immediately be people who were going to want to be in the crew.

That’s how freestyle began growing here”. Within the actual members of Sudamétrica

You’ll find the groups Buenos Aires Subterràneo, El Mester de los Juflares, Tao Tek, Los Panchos (ex-Dardo Perfecto of Chile) and the incredible Sandoval, Mustàfa’s disciple and right hand man when it’s time to wrecking a show. “Sando is a bad MC. He was a 17 year old kid that would go against 30 year old cats. When his solo cd comes out he’s gonna mop people up. You have no idea what kind of flow he has”!

Finally in 2004, after so many years and an arduous career, Mustafà was able to concentrate on the golden dream of every MC: publish his solo cd. With Sudamétrica converted over as an independent label, and with the lack of interest of multinational labels, Mustafà Yoda realized with the help of some friends, the recording and edition of what is the first cd in the history of Argentinean hip hop professionally edited and formatted independently. “Cuentos de Chicos Para Grandes” is, besides being an excellent cd of pure serious hip hop for those who love the genre, the concrete proof that it is possible to make a hit cd by taking the independent route, something that most until now did not believe.

And the recognition came by surprise. The noise that the cd made with the press in Argentina had never been seen before with a rap album. Not only the newspapers and music reviews, but the national news was also interested and wanted to interview this rhyme spitter from barrio Moreno who, without hesitation, will kick lyrics that take a critical look at society and also pack a message of self improvement (“the competition I’ll leave for freestyling,” he clarifies).

All the MC’s from Sudamétrica participate on the cd, besides Koala, from the Chilean group FDA, Apolo of Koxmoz and Fidel Nadal of Todos Tus Muertos; the cuts come courtesy of JP Sgaglia, Argentinean champion of the DMC and the production was left in the hands of Andino, a Latino producer living in the United States.

Cuentos De Chicos Para Grandes was recently selected for the Argentinean edition of the Rolling Stone as one of the 50 best albums of the year. Currently you can only find the cd in Argentina, but you can listen to the tracks on rotation right here on Latino Hip Hop Radio.