This weekend an Argentine has filled the WiZink Center in Madrid two days in a row and it has not been Andrés Calamaro or Fito Páez. The “no tickets left” sign is by Mauro Ezequiel Lombardo, better known as Duki. He is 26 years old and is the greatest exponent of the success of the new musical wave that is triumphing in Argentina. With 23 million monthly listeners on Spotify and two Grammy nominations in 2021, the year in which he was the most listened to Argentine artist, according to the same platform. He is positioned as the most visible face of an urban music scene with which an entire generation in his country identifies.
‘We started playing for 30 people and now we fill the stadium’, sings Duki a cappella in front of more than 34,000 people between Friday and Saturday in Madrid. This verse corresponds to her session with Bizarrap, with which the locals have more than 70 million views on YouTube and another 90 on Spotify. “It’s amazing that I can feel like this outside the home,” she says. The truth is that as soon as she got the first date for Madrid, it took her only a few hours to sell all the tickets. For the concert in Barcelona at the Palau Sant Jordi there are no more. And despite the fact that in Spain he does not stop selling tickets, he does it even more on the other side of the pond: he filled the Vélez stadium and up to four times the José Amalfitani stadium in Buenos Aires, selling 180,000 tickets.
“It is that Duki is real; he raps coming from the street and that is why we identify with him”, two young Argentines commented to this newspaper at the gates of the old Palacio de los Deportes in Madrid. Duki’s is the story of a boy from the Almagro neighborhood with little income who left his studies to be an artist. “And my mother thought: this kid is crazy”, he comments between laughs on stage.
‘I don’t sell trap‘ is the title of the first song that Bizarrap uploaded to his channel. It is a remix of the first song by Duki, who created the trap scene in the country around it. The rapper was able to record his first song in 2016 after winning The Fifth Stepa rap contest freestyle that managed to engage the Argentine youth. No microphones, no promotion, no great resources. Only the meeting that would later be uploaded to the YouTube channel. Until it went viral. This contest founded by the rapper Ysy A, which lasted until 2017, also included artists such as Paulo Londra, Trueno or Neo Pistea. While the country hasn’t had many hip-hop-related artists, The Fifth Step It was the place where the kids could get together to do what they liked the most and it is one of the keys to the success of this musical wave.
At the concert, opened first by Munic and later by Leïti Sene, the Argentine rapper reviewed his musical career. His first artistic stage, when he exploded, is that of ‘Devil Mode’, is characterized by exploiting the trap and the most careful rhymes, but mixing it with different more experimental styles such as rock. And it is that despite being a benchmark for a new genre in his country, Duke He has declared himself a fan of the classic Charly García or Linkin Park. In fact, on stage he was accompanied by a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer and even a keyboard at times. The band, accompanied by the games of lights, the big screens and even the fire that came out of the stage, brought new sounds to their live performance in the songs. The Argentine raps about self-love, heartbreak, sudden and unexpected success or growing up in a neighborhood with few resources.
To finish off this first part of the show, Dano came out, the Argentine artist who emigrated to Spain years ago, where they played their last song; ‘Holy Grail’. “He is one of the first rappers I met. Later we found out that we were from the same neighborhood and he has been a teacher to many. In Spain you have an incredible musical quality”, affirmed Duki on stage. The Argentine has collaborations with C. Tangana, Quevedo, Rels B, Sticky MA and Recycled J. “This guy plays in Australia, the US, throughout Latin America… I ask him to leave Madrid and think he’s been the best show of his life”, Dano agitated the public.
Duki always wanted his music to reach the mainstream. Claiming reggaeton, its Argentine essence and the Latin American essence against the United States, he composed reggaeton season in 2021 with its second part a year later. “I want to stop talking about Mauro to write lyrics that reach people and with which they also feel identified,” he argued in his release.
“We are going through bad times and music can serve to distract us or make us stronger”
Duki
There will always be the debate of staying “pure” and faithful to a style or making more commercial music. But Quevedo came out on stage’a frontear’ and it seemed that the WiZink was falling off. People jumped, did pogos and, of course, also twerking. “He is a benchmark for everyone, appreciate him,” said the Canarian artist about the Argentine when he was leaving. It is logical that, being his best-known songs, they were the ones that reverberated the most in the stadium, but Duki knew how to give a unique touch to the night accompanying the reggaeton With his band. The one from Buenos Aires mixed his best-known songs with some slower ones. In like it doesn’t matterwith the help of mobile phone flashes, an atmosphere of starry sky was generated during the concert.
Con Givenchy, where he assured that his ‘Devil Mode’ would return, he made the feint of ending the concert. Before the public’s expected chorus of “another”, she came out to sing She don’t give a fo, song with which he became famous internationally. “I see people of all ages. I make music for everyone. Thanks to those who come working tomorrow. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. We are going through bad times and music can serve to distract us or make us stronger, ”the artist closed as he made the heart symbol by joining the fingers of his hands.
Duki as a reference to a musical revolution in Argentina
From Duke It is an example in Argentina of how artists have supported each other to make a scene vibrate that today is a world reference. And his legacy is worth twice as much when his country is deeply rooted in other styles. Although in other countries, including Spain, the new wave of urban music from the US of 2012 arrived in 2014, in Argentina it would not arrive until 2016 with Duki as a reference.
Just as Bad Bunny did with Duki and Pablo Chill-E, taking them to a more international scene by including them on one of his most famous albums, YHLQMDLG, Duki himself has done the same with much of the Argentine music scene. He has collaborations with a large number of artists in the country. From the young Tobi Dolezor to the most classic like Paulo Londra, Niki Nicole, L-Gante, Emilia Mernes or Khea.
Duki is one of the artists who has grown independently. First with her own stamp; Super Sangre Joven Records and later joining the Dale Play Records label when it was still emerging, which now triumphs internationally by also integrating artists like Bizarrap. ‘They know that now we are’ in the crosshairs’summarizes Duki singing in his song Vampires.
The success of this explosion of new music in Argentina is due to the need and gaps that existed, according to the opinion of the creators of Dale Play. In addition, this proposal does not deny the above, being common for artists to incorporate elements of the funkthe cumbia or the rock. They even update them, like L-Gante and cumbia. For now, they take over the heads of festivals, fill stadiums and are a reference for the entire genre.