Just because these two guys are some of the best and most influential DJs to ever come out of the Chilean hip-hop scene, doesn’t mean that when they get together to produce music the end result is will sound anything like standard hip-hop beats.
DJ Raff has been involved as a scratch DJ in Chile’s hip-hop avant garde scene since its genesis. In recent years, however, he stopped scratching records to focus on experimental sound production, which in turn, took him in unprecedented directions. Latin Bitman used to be one half of Bitman & Roban, the first duo of Chilean DJ/producers to crossover to international notoriety about a decade ago. He has produced beats for some of the most prestigious MCs in Chile (Ana Tijoux has been a frequent guest in almost all his projects), and last year he surprised us with Ritmo Machine, his collaboration with Eric Bobo of Cypress Hill.
Now when DJ Raff and Latin Bitman get together, the resulting synergy is called RVSB, a texting-era abbreviation of Raff vs. Bitman. And what they do together, as I said above, has very little to do with what they did on their own. There’s almost no hip-hop, no scratching, no funky break-beats and no rap on their album (available now on Nacional Records), which I guess will appeal more to the modern EDM crowd than the orthodox b-boys. There aren’t any explicit connections to Latin music either, which I guess is why Bitman dropped the Latino off his name for this project. What you’ll find is some top-notch nondescript electronic abstract beats like the one you have down here as a free download.
I’m still intrigued about the “vs.” part of their collective name, since there doesn’t seem to be any clear winner of this proposed confrontation. In fact, I picture them like one big mutant brain with four hands surrounded by piles upon piles of futuristic electronic gadgets.
