How is Villano Antillano not enormous yet? XXL is a COLORS session and the stripped stage the platform is known for does her no favours and every favour at once: nothing to hide behind, just the voice, and the voice is a weapon. The Puerto Rican rapper has been carving out space as one of the sharpest perreo writers around, openly trans in a genre that hasn’t always made room for that, and she performs like someone who had to be twice as good to get through the door. You can hear that in how little she wastes. The flow switches gears without warning, sliding from a low taunting drawl into rapid-fire runs that land every syllable clean, and she never once sounds like she’s straining to keep up with her own beat. The instrumental is minimal, mostly a dembow skeleton and a single bass note, which leaves all the oxygen in the room for the delivery and basically dares her to fill it. She fills it. There’s a stretch near the end where she drops almost to a whisper and it’s more threatening than anything she shouts, the kind of control that takes years to learn and can’t be faked. This is a long way from the electronic stuff that usually fills this blog, and that distance is exactly why it’s here: talent this obvious shouldn’t need a genre pass to reach you. Go watch her do it live with no net under her.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.