Upon entering Broke Carrey’s Hijo del País release party, two things are immediately apparent. Every consequential music industry professional in Argentina is eager to hear the 29-year-old rapper’s folklore-charged new album, and we’re all about to eat damn good. The empty lot in Parque Patricios in Buenos Aires is decorated with a giant print of the LP’s cover and a surreal installation of a car in a tree, machinations of the Rip Gang’s visionary creative director, Noduermo. At the center, two extra-long tables are set up for a feast, as wafting asado smoke and free-flowing Amargo Obrero—an herbal aperitif served with pointedly proletarian intent—tickle local fancies. Seats fill with record execs, bookers, journalists, avant-garde divas Feli Colina and La Piba Berreta, Rip Gang alumni including ill quentin and Odd Mami, and, embodying the role of the crew’s patriarch, trap-rock idol Dillom takes his place at the head of the table dressed in an aristocratic suit. Pop sensation Lali later discreetly joined the dinner while glitchy 360-degree visuals were projected around the space during a booming play-through of the record.
But Carrito—as everyone calls Carrey, born Manuel Peña—sits in the middle, peppered into the crowd, intent on enjoying the celebration instead of conducting it. He’s surrounded by production confidants Lamadrid and Elmalamía, and when pressed for a speech, he offers, “This project is full of love for my friends, for my family, and for our land.” It’s a succinct summation of Hijo del País as a tender and raging patchwork of Argentinidad, weaving rustic chacareras and carnavalitos, cutting-edge digital production, and Carrey’s signature rap growl. The result is a complex, conflicted portrait of a country negotiating its identity under the material challenges of modernity, emphasizing the artist as a guardian of cultural memory and as a thorn in the side of the powerful.
“With [my first album] Buenos Aires Motel, I asked myself what it means to be Porteño. Now, I’m asking what it means to be Argentino,” says Carrey, speaking with Remezcla days after the release. “I didn’t find an answer, but rather the music, rhythms, and baggage of a country. Every province originated a bunch of genres and their corresponding subgenres, so then you wonder if Argentina is just one thing—like tango as music for tourist pamphlets, or Atahualpa [Yupanqui] with his guitar—or if it’s everything. Last year, a conservative congressman made a vile statement that charango and music from the North had nothing to do with Argentina. But Argentina encompasses many different countries and traditions. Culture is in diversity.”
So, what does it mean to be Argentino? The self-proclaimed “Mejor País del Mundo” is often reduced to a cocky monolith of whiteness, overly fond of its European roots. Recent headlines show that, though not an entirely incorrect read, it lacks crucial nuance, like the enduring legacy of native peoples in the country’s northern region and the political and economic uncertainty that renders Argentina just as Latin American as its neighbors. Then there’s Peronismo—an ethos and movement started in the 1940s, built on tenets of social justice, political sovereignty, and workers’ rights—a pillar of Argentine identity, both as the basis of their characteristic self-assurance and unwavering protection of patrimony.
Carrey has been socially and politically engaged since childhood, when his mother’s work in a public television newsroom kept him abreast of global affairs, and growing up in the working-class neighborhood of Boedo fostered ardent labor solidarity. He was immersed in acting and painting from a young age, finding his artistic voice as a teenager during Argentina’s trap boom of the 2010s. He later formed the Talented Broke Boys collective alongside ill Quentin and Dillom, which gradually swelled and evolved into the Rip Gang with fashionable, genre-immune projects like Saramalacara and K4. Throughout our conversation, my gaze wandered onto Carrey’s T-shirt airbrushed with an image of Alberto Samid, a Peronista politician and beef industry magnate referred to as the “King of Meat.” His chuckling explanation of Samid’s ironic pop culture relevance as the clearest metaphor for how the rapper wears politics on his sleeve.
In fact, Broke Carrey’s breakthrough came in 2024 on the heels of his song “Montonero,” where the polemic lyric “Me cago en Milei y su hermana” drew the ire of the Libertarian president’s online hoards and even disapproving finger-wagging from rock icon Andrés Calamaro. Hijo del País doubles down on political criticism with the satirical ditty “Miguelito,” an uproarious ranchera poking fun at a power-hungry pencil pusher who cons his way into the highest office in the land. Of course, the personal is also political, and on haunting tracks like “Renacimiento” and “NMQN,” Carrey taps into the desperation of a people in crisis, strapped for cash or clarity about their future, and coursing empathy rather than admonishment.
“Hijo del País is not me talking to the people who agree with me,” cautions Carrey, echoing the lyrics of one of the album’s most potent songs, “Leones.” “We’re all children of this land, so we’re all brothers and neighbors, even with opposing ideologies. The idea that there’s an irreconcilable chasm between us is wrong, because now people vote against what they hate instead of for what they believe.”
Broke Carrey taps national kinship through a folkloric musical palette, finding allies in the Santiago del Estero duo Trove Feraud, who infused the demonic chacarera “Zupay” with galloping percussion and ghostly vocal melodies. “Las Piedras,” a joyful carnavalito out of the Gepe playbook weaves charango and bombo legüero into a delicious slice of Andean pop. And “monumento..,” the album’s beating, sacrilegious heart, is an acoustic tonada cuyana crafted alongside Usted Señalemelo’s Cocó Orozco. Reminiscent of Rosalía’s “Hentai,” the song upends the solemnity invading modern interpretations of traditional music with a soaring, heartfelt ode to ass—a reminder that roots music lives in the street and in our homes, not in a museum.
“There’s a misconception about folklore as this slow, boring, solemn music, but when you start listening to classic chacareras, you realize they’re not so different from how we write today,” says Carrey. “Those songs talk about partying, heartbreak, and wild neighborhood characters. In the 20th century, they started injecting social themes, but the nucleus has always been connection and enjoyment, and I couldn’t leave that essence of celebration by the wayside.”
“I’m still trying to live off my music, but now my art has a bigger purpose than my own benefit. This goes beyond making it in the mainstream; it’s about contributing something of value to our national culture,” he adds.
So, again I ask, what does it mean to be Argentino? Is it the simple earnestness of music from the countryside, the populist politics that mobilize demands for justice and equity, or the joy of squeezing around a table with friends and family to loudly chew on prime cuts of meat? Broke Carrey chooses all of the above, and perhaps more of us should, too.
Hijo del País is out now.