Dinais: “La Pataecabra”
DJ Culebro might be a celebrity in his local Bogotá, Colombia, but he’s still relatively unknown in the global underground music scene, to which he clearly belongs. And that’s unfair, he deserves to be a global celebrity. He’s got a wide range of interests including DJ’ing, producing, traveling, meeting cool people, attending parties, setting up gigs, etc. But from all his interests and activities his most accomplished role is that of producing.
Early this year, Culebro produced an outstanding record, Buffet, for Dinais. Culebro actually is one half of Dinais alongside his friend and vocalist Ximena. Culebro produces, in his Dinais guise, indifferently both modern beats and dubstep-like ballads and classic cheesy tropical tunes.
To this effect ‘Buffet’ represents a wild wild ride that covers much of old latino music, cumbia, balada, torch cantina song, merengue, tropical, et al. But Culebro isn’t at ease with fitting into just one genre; he’s got mastered the contemporary practice of mixing everything with everything, sort of in the same line that ultra-hip DJ/Rupture.
Often times Culebro gets excellent results (like in the Skrillexian “Estrellita Navideña”), sometimes, he doesn’t (like in “Perrito Hardcorero”).
Ximena´s vocal register is equally staggering. She sings like a sassy chick the same way she raps with equal credibility. She even sometimes sings like Maria Minerva, and in the same track she sings like a little girl.
The one track that stands out though, is “La Pataecabra,” a gangsta rap track.
La Pataecabra (which roughly translate as the goat hoof) tells the story of a girl who, by means of violence, makes her way into the male-dominant drug trafficking world. You might think of La Mala Rodriguez, just cooler. A goat hoof is considered a bad luck fetish in Latin America, the way La Pataecabra embodies bad luck for those who happen to be standing in her way. La pataecabra states that her father was the hardest guy in the ghetto, and whoever bitch that barks at her she will crack her head. She doesn’t consider a sin to kill. Rather she considers her gun as her amulet. Later she discloses that the police back her up. And that she’s good at giving people something to sorrow about.
The production sounds nothing like Culebro has done before, it is aggressive and confrontational and so very solid like a brick smashing your face to pieces. If anything, it sounds too much like classic gangsta rap, which comes as a refreshing surprise considering the overall pop feeling of the record as a whole.
Mucho DJ Culebro, mucho!
You can stream and download the whole LP on Bandcamp
Written by Julio Lorea
