For some weird reason, listening to rap helps me focus when I'm doing work, maybe because it has a steady beat? At any rate, I am burning up in the Tisch library right now (which is probably only 75 degrees but feels positively balmy compared to the outdoors and my 58 degree house) rocking out to Chilean rap group Tiro de Gracias. I never really got around to writing about this while I was in Chile, but it is fascinating to me how "street culture" of the US has been exported and reworked, in both its positive and negative manifestations. Think graffiti covered walls, and "flaite" fashion, a degrading Chilean word that basically is the equivalent of looking "ghetto". Baggy shirts, flat brim caps and all. In the same way that rap is pretty much the only music that voices the problems of the inner city in the US, rap in Chile provides a similar voice to urban poverty, although there's also a stronger tradition of socially conscious folk music.
Anyway, Tiro de Gracias. They kind of sound like a really white (although not quite Beasty Boysesque) Chilean permutation of 90s rap.
Joven de la Pobla (roughly translating to Kid from the Hood. If you look in the background of this video, the landscape is pretty similar to what it looked like where I worked in Maipú. The tall buildings are the Chilean equivalent of housing projects)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_lxa7nam90
Melaza
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPwgkGch5cE&playnext=1&list=PL03DF7E075B4642E7
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