Criolo opens up about “Sobre Viver”, his new album: “I sing the social abyss we live in”

In the poetry that opens his new album, “Sobre Viver” (2022), Creole travels the path between nightmare and hope in short 30 seconds. The reality, he guarantees, could not be further away: “We are in 2022 and there are some raps written 30 years ago that are describing today… Things don’t change, bro!“

These are contrasts as the singer exposes in the 10 tracks of the new album. Launched this Thursday (5), “About Living” finds a Creole rapper, aligning itself with “Nó na Ear” (2011) and “Summon Your Buddha” (2014) in what already appears as a trilogy. It is a Creole somewhat different from the one seen in 2017, when he released Espiral de Illusion, all based on samba.

“This album talks about faith, resilience… it talks once again about this social abyss we live in, and what comes with it“. At the root of potent letters, Creole speaks of the indignation, anger and grief he had to face until he found hope amidst the chaos.

MOURNING AND MUSIC

Mourning, by the way, is an important theme in the conception and production of the record. In 2021, Creole lost his sister victim of covid-19 at age 38. If death would give space, in September of last year a rap loaded with denunciation (“Clane”), here the singer works on the theme in a more emotional way.

Alongside her mother, Maria Vilani, goes back to the origins of the family and to the arrival of her sister in the family, in the 1980s: “Taking care of my sister, now just in prayer / She’s not here anymore… it’s just that this world doesn’t deserve you“.

“‘So tiny, so beautiful,’ I sing. It’s still very recent. It’s always going to be recent when you talk about a brother’s death, right? ‘Oh, but 30 years have passed’ – no, it was yesterday! And it’s not because we want to suffer. It’s because it’s a fact. And I came back in 1982 in that shack. And I remembered my mother there young, going through all those tapes. Now we go back to exchange ideas, in 2022, without my sister.“

COMPLAINT IN VESOS

Creole have a lot to say. And he says, in songs like “Sétimo Templário”, where he shoots light denunciations of racism, militias, the state, genocides: “Born by Lago’s order / Othello suffered revenge / When racism becomes a vote, death drops in childhood“. Even in the most sublime themes of his album, “Ogum Ogum” and “Yemanjá Chega”, the musician sheds light on urgent themes:

“Many prayer houses are being destroyed and nobody talks about it. Or, when we talk, the space is small, we talk very little. This religious intolerance can be translated into other phrases: persecution, murder, death. So yes it is urgent.“

All the urgency, however, is in the songs. In the conversation, he calmly, yet assertively, describes the root of the outrage present in his rap: “The social part that was already fragile, struggling a lot, was totally forgotten, and this strengthened even more this cruelty that flows into the streets, in hunger, fear, depression, you know? It is a country of hunger, where people are increasingly feeling insecure, sad. So, once again, rap presents itself as a portal to this urgent, necessary exchange. It’s always time to talk about improvement. But you can’t talk about improvement and not talk about everything that’s happening.“

“IN THE TIME IT HAS TO BE”

It is the scenarios and internal conflicts that end up taking him away from the composition process itself, after the Carnival of Espiral de Ilusões: “I went about three years without composing, before the pandemic, I was kind of like this, I was even a little discredited with myself“, he says. According to him, it was the support of his family and colleagues that sustained him until he returned to writing, which came naturally to him.

“It was in the time it had to be, only I didn’t own that time. I went slowly back, not realizing it. Meanwhile, all these people I told you about giving support, support, support”, he says, “but there are things that have their time, it’s no use. So it was happening, slowly, slowly. And then it happened. It happened like this“.

In the process, he meets the duo Tropikillaz, with whom he puts most of the disc upright. invites MC Hariel, liner and Jacques Morelenbaun for the disc’s lean holdings. And also Milton Nascimentowho moves you when you remember.

“You can’t help but get emotional, you know? Because such a hard text and Milton has already sung so much on the planet… When I presented the song to him, he already replied ‘I liked it, I want to record it’. I can’t describe the size of my emotion and how gigantic this song was in his voice“, account Creole.

It is from these meetings that Creole he takes what he defines as the keynote of his album – hope in the midst of chaos, the perseverance of wanting to live. “I was in a lot of hate, a lot of pain, a lot of despair, you know? Not that it changed, or that it calmed down. Art offers hug, breath, warmth, reflection, path…“, he says. Previously called Diário do Kaos – with K de Kleber, the individual behind Creole – the album is renamed “Sobre Viver”.

And the name that delivers the content wins. “In the middle of this process, everyone saw that we are surviving all this. We have the will to live. We don’t give up on living“.