- A stunning album that showcases the ghostly, barebones funk of the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, with a cast of guest vocalists from across the country.
- Baile funk is becoming more popular outside of Brazil year after year. With former MCs Anitta and Ludmilla trailblazing international careers and gaining fans like Travis Scott and Karol G, baile funk beats (or just funk, as Brazilians prefer) are now common on streaming playlists and global dance floors. But under every new trend in mainstream music there's a massive and often unorthodox underground. That's where we find Anderson do Paraíso, one of the most important funk DJs from Belo Horizonte, the country's sixth largest city, in southeastern Brazil. Queridão, his first album, is a milestone in his career as much as it's a landmark for his hometown's unique and unsettling strain of dance music.
Belo Horizonte, or BH, is a landlocked city hemmed in by mountains. The culture is distinct from the coastal areas where São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are located. Music from BH (and the Minas Gerais state more generally) is closely associated with Brazilian all-stars like Milton Nascimento and Clara Nunes—it's not really a baile funk hotbed. But in the '90s, local MCs and DJs embraced baile funk with a hip-hop slant that came to be called consciente. The lyrics focused on overcoming challenges and surviving the harsh lifestyle of low-income neighbourhoods. By the late '00s, BH street parties exploded in popularity as the city developed its own kind of funk—a macabre version of the genre in which silence is as important as sound (alongside explicitly sexual lyrics). Anderson, who started producing in 2012, quickly became a go-to artist in this scene.
"I like to have an identity—like when people listen to my music, they say: this is Anderson do Paraíso," he said in a recent interview. He's made his mark by pushing back against the misleading notion that BH funk has to be minimal. There's nothing subtle about his dense mishmash of strange noises and gruesome chords, notes that linger and stain each beat. His music sounds like a horde of ghosts in a dance battle horror movie.
In "Se Faz de Santinha," Anderson thins out baile funk rhythms with jarring and haphazard piano keys. MC Maykin do BC's vocals blur together with string melodies for a haunted atmosphere, while "Chama Suas Colegas pra Brincar" melds together Christian choirs and bells with a performance from GW, one of the most prominent MCs in the sexually explicit "putaria" funk sub-genre. "Aula de Putaria" is no more than a heavy kick, glass bottles breaking and a spooky sample of the Persian bowed string instrument kamanche.
The energy remains sombre throughout the whole LP, which makes heavy use of echo effects and reverb to make everything sound dramatic and foreboding. Anderson also finds ways to sneak in other horror elements. On "Joga Leite," a sad, out-of-tune tuba resembles "Dies irae," the 13th-century medieval piece that inspired Wendy Carlos' theme for The Shining. And when the music seems like it's drifting away from funk, Anderson pulls out a reversed version of Rio de Janeiro's tamborzão beats, turning baile funk inside out. It's a reminder that as weird as it might get, his music is still made for street parties in BH's favelas and the local neighbourhoods of Serra, Inestan, PTB and Taquaril. In these bailes, Anderson has become a living legend. Queridão is the urgent, vital sound of the streets he rules over.
Tracklist01. SADOMASOQUISTA feat. DJ DG DO RB & MC's PAULIN DO G, BRAIAN, PEPEU, DÃAN
02. VAI COMEÇAR PUTARIA feat. DJ JR
03. PATY TREM BARBIE feat. MC MAGRELLA
04. SE FAZ DE SANTINHA feat. MC MAYKIN DO BC
05. TODAS ELAS AO MESMO TEMPO feat. MC's PR & MR. BIM
06. JOGA LEITE feat. MC's LARANJINHA & LAURETA
07. BLOGUEIRA QUE VIROU PUTA feat. MC PAULIN DO G
08. PINCELADA DE ANGOLANO
09. VAI FICA DE 4, VAI JOGA PRA MIM, ELA ME FAZ DE CAVALAO
10. QUARENTENA CHEIO DE ODIO
11. MC PR DUVIDA NÃO LETICIA
12. VAI MOZÃO, FODE SEU GOSTOSO
13. CONTOS DE UM MALCRIADO14. CHAMAS SUAS COLEGAS PRA BRINCAR feat. DJ's AG O GRINGO & ANDERSON DO PARAISO
15. UNIÃO DOS RLK feat. DJ's PH DA SERRA, VITIN DO PC & MC's FAHAH, PAULIN DO G, CODE
16. AULA DE PUTARIA #BRAAAABA
17. ULTIMO MEDO DO ANO