Composer, producer, reporter, children’s writer, fashion entrepreneur. And above all, rapper. The Brazilian Emicida is not a star to use. He transforms the aura of his fame into a constellation that makes those around him shine. The artist presents his acclaimed album Amarelo in Madrid and Barcelona.
“There is no individual victory. If you think you only arrived, it is because arrogance dominated you. All victory is collective.” Leandro Roque de Oliveira, better known as Emicida, speaks with magnetic parsimony. From the height of his career, he reflects mixing hip-hop culture, African sayings, street slang and a spirituality molded with Hinduism, Afro-Brazilian religiosity, popular Catholicism and a Buddhism that he already practiced.
His speech emanates sensitivity. “I like the word vulnerability. We have to look honestly at our own vulnerability and finiteness, and understand why we do what we do,” says Emicida.
When he began to stand out in the MC battles on the outskirts of São Paulo in the 2000s, he did not suspect that one day Caetano Veloso or Gilberto Gil would record with him. Thanks to Amarelo (2019), a project that goes beyond the studio album with a documentary, podcast and live album, Emicida won a Latin Grammy and conquered cities such as London, Paris, Berlin or Lisbon. The artist resumes the flow of Amarelo, an album full of optimism, aromas of samba and references to the sun, with a tour that stops in Madrid (Sala Independance) on May 4 and in Barcelona (Sala Apolo) on May 5.
“Amarelo was not unamimity,” Emicida meditates. “Some fans thought it was strange. The pandemic came, they gave him another chance, and there he did become a phenomenon. Amarelo is a manifesto on the beauty of being, of being you same”. The rapper wanted people to feel bigger than their fears when listening to him.
At the beginning of the song Cananéia, iguape e ilha Comprida, the artist jokes with one of his little daughters about prejudice against rap. “How limiting are stereotypes! Why does the rapper have to be a tough guy? Is it a stereotype about black people? About poor people?” Emicida wonders.
October 24, 2016. Catwalk of the São Paulo Fashion Week. The screen is a fast-paced visual collage. Emicida, microphone in hand, rhymes-that-rhymes with a background of skyscrapers, favelas, viaducts, skaters, people walking. Rodrigo Somália, the first model, walks while the rapper repeats a phrase (“Blessed, praised be”).
On his shirt, a black Buddha. His hands, in the pockets of a kind of kimono. The following models carry messages on their clothing such as “I love quebrada” (quebrada stands for favela) or ubuntu (a South African word meaning “I am because we are”). With a dedicated audience, Emicida returns to the box: “Today is the day the favela invaded fashion week.”
The LAB brand conceptualized by the Emicida troupe was inaugurated. The Yasuke show, which made reference to a Japanese black samurai, had a great impact in the media and in the fashion world. “What we did on the catwalk, we had already done on the street, when local shopping wasn’t so popular. We already sold enough t-shirts, caps. We looked at the fashion champions league in Brazil and thought we were capable of win there as well”, qualifies Emicida.
Rodrigo Somália, who had already had a professional life in Italy, assures that that parade was the most impressive of his life. “White models always open the fashion shows, and I was opening that one. Every time I listen to the soundtrack I feel that energy. It marked me a lot. It was very beautiful. The force that this work had was gigantic,” says Rodrigo with an emotional voice.
The Ghost Laboratory emerged in 2009 as a collective that sold handmade t-shirts. “Records were no longer being sold. We made t-shirts to survive. We understood that an artistic career went beyond doing concerts and selling records,” says Emicida. After the shirts, the Ghost Laboratory – which its participants affectionately call “LAB”, in feminine, – began to record mixtapes and video clips for artists.
And to organize concerts, tours and massive festivals. If in 2016 the story of a black samurai was the surprise of São Paulo fashion week, in 2017 Emicida launched the Herança collection, with clothes woven by his own mother and a clip about a young skater who inherits clothes from his sambista grandmother.
The LAB shows abound with black power hair, overweight models and positive messages about the peripheries. The urban and informal style of the garments is seasoned with the sound art of the Ghost Laboratory dream team (Rael, Drik Barbosa, Evandro Fióti or Emicida himself).
LAB clothing, an icon of Brazilian fashion, connects the different elements of the Emicida universe. Sold at affordable prices, it generates belonging for many young people who identify with one of Emicida’s mottos, a rua é noiz (“the street is ours”). “Regardless of the fact that we are walking in a fashion week, we will see a different catwalk. Before, in a catwalk in Brazil there were fewer blacks and indigenous people than in one in Sweden, a depressing paradox, because the characteristic of Brazil is diversity,” he says. Emicida. Something corroborated by Rodrigo Somália: “In Italy I saw more blacks working in fashion than in Brazil.
I always liked the sensitive and affectionate look of the LAB, not only with the black models, but also with questions of gender or ethnicity. At that time, it was very important to a lot of black models who were wanting to break through.”
Emicida defines the Ghost Lab as a “bubble of opportunity.” As an entertainment hub whose mission is to transform places through music and love. “Transformation guides everything we do. We managed to transform the lives of many people. We created a structure for them to place their workforce in something they believe in. The LAB is a key piece in a mentality change that had to happen, not just on the periphery and hip-hop culture, but on black people,” says Emicida.
Producer Júlio Fejuca, 39, is one of the faces of “the bubble of opportunities.” After producing a few tours, he became one of the house’s artistic directors. “I had no experience directing shows, they saw talent in me and bet their chips. They have vision and give opportunities. I am very grateful,” Fejuca qualifies.
The artist Drik Barbosa, one of the stars of Brazilian rap, justifies the exclusivity she has with LAB: “We treat each other with affection, empathy and responsibility. I appreciate being part of this family that generates so many connections and necessary changes.”
Evandro Fióti –Emicida’s brother, founder and CEO of Laboratorio Fantasma– recognizes that his great objective is to generate a positive impact: “Our work contributes to valuing diversity and inclusion and to changing people’s lives through words, from music and hip hop culture.
Emicida rarely speaks in the first person singular. She usually uses the plural. From ubuntu to rua é noiz, from her phrases a us sprouts. “We want to go as far as possible, that’s why we walk collectively. With more visions, with more life experiences, which are not necessarily mine. Our philosophy, our way of life, is the subject of some 1,500 academic studies,” the artist points out. with pride. If the Emicida star shines, it is for the benefit of a vibrant constellation of musicians, producers, models, designers, clothing stylists.
The Ghost Laboratory, that small initiative of handmade t-shirts and rap, is on the crest of the wave. In recent years, with the help of Emicida, he has signed the soundtrack of O menino e o mundo (nominated for an Oscar in 2016), a documentary for Netflix (Amarelo), the documentary series O Enigma da Energia Escura on black culture ( released by GNT and Globoplay), among many other things.
The children’s book E foi assim que eu e a escuridão ficamos amigas (Companhia das Letras, 2020) symbolizes the artist’s new creative horizons. “The pandemic made me a much more sensitive person. I had never been at home with my family for so long, drinking coffee, eating. Most of the time I had to be a father, accompany the tasks. Now, it is more difficult for me to distance myself from my family”.
The children’s book he wrote, in which he reconciles the little ones with fear and darkness, reflects the paternal side of who was already the king of MC battles or a provocative reporter for MTV. “The first time I thought about giving a positive destiny to the world was when I took my daughter in my arms. My two daughters washed my eyes. They gave me the opportunity to see the world as it really is, without the filters and prejudices that we place the adults”, he confesses.
Fear is part of the world. Better to face it than pretend it doesn’t exist. Word of Emicida, collective star, rising constellation, the rapper who transforms everything he touches into poetry, the man who, in the words of Drik Barbosa, “embraces the world with art, but who knows the importance of remembering the way home” .
*Emicida plays in Madrid (Sala Independance) on May 4 and in Barcelona (Sala Apolo) on May 5
