Atlanta meets São Paulo meets Medellín meets London meets Miami. This is the sort of international delegation one might have only imagined in an alternate dimension of a música urbana game of chess– that is, until the powerhouse remix of MC Fioti’s “Bum Bum Tam Tam” arrived today.
Off hand, one might think that creating a remix inclusive of vocal takes by reggaetón/trap en Español smooth boy J Balvin, ATL’s finest Future, UK rapper Stefflon Don, and pop crooner Juan Magan might overwhelm with the code switching between genres and flows. However this remix pulls off the art of maximizing each talent’s strong points without overwhelming the beat, artfully finessing a minimalist take that’s a stylistic parallel to MC Fioti’s flute-driven baile funk original.
The original MC Fioti “Bum Bum Tam Tam” has already racked up a generous 500 million plus views on YouTube and 71 plus streams on Spotify. These analytics frame it as a reasonable place as any to identify source material with maximum play potential for a remix commission; in this case, the effort marked a partnership between Island UK, Aftercluv, and Universal Brazil.
Cultural instances like this seem to point toward the music industry’s at-large broadening of the definition of what “general market” means in the context of major labels, perhaps a reflection of a more welcoming acceptance of a globalized music landscape that reaches beyond traditional (and unnecessary) cultural and language segmentations. It’s a hopeful time to bid adieu to all that and to celebrate common ground and intersections, as was also the case recently with the similarly multilingual take on the Farruko, Bad Bunny, and Rvssian meets Nicki Minaj and 21 Savage remix of “Krippy Kush.”
The future might just be rightfully multilingual and cross-genre, and we’re here for that.