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This story is part of our Sondio Latino series for Hispanic Heritage Month.
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WHEN YOU START playing Murio La Musica, a mixtape by Argentinian rappers AgusFortnite2008 and Stiffy, you hear an onslaught of crunchy 808s and incantation-like chants that ascend through disorienting key changes. As soon as you can catch your breath, CDJ backspins and menacing laughter throw you into what feels like the world’s most sinister Shepard tone.
The mixtape’s opening song, “24/7,” is almost an entirely different form of music, beamed in from another dimension. There’s Spanglish word-salad, layers of sound effects, and bass that would sound normal blasting out an Altima’s chuchero. That ethos is solidified on the tape’s second track, “MEJORALITO,” where a voice pipes in: “esto es musica 2, musica de otro siglo.” It translates to “this is Music 2, music from another century.”
MURIO LA MUSICA is one of several joint efforts by the Buenos Aires-based rappers Stiffy and AgusFortnite2008, who make up the duo Swaggerboyz. Alongside other rappers from the region like Joshu Joshu, they are introducing a brand new sound to Latin America by crafting their own scene of Spanish-language hypertrap.
A superficial read of the scene could label the music as “post-hyperpop,” songs wholly birthed from the last wave of Internet music in all of its radical unpredictability. Their aesthetic is of a similar ilk as underground rappers like Xaviersobased and Tisakorean, who create dada-esque album covers by throwing heavy Instagram filters over stretched selfies and photoshopped collages, filled with memes and nostalgic cartoon characters.
Ask Swaggerboyz to describe their music and their answers are just as unserious and irreverent as their sonic approach: “[Our music] was sent by an advanced civilization in space, to see if there was any intelligence left here,” Stiffy tells Rolling Stone. Still, they are among a group of artists still in their teens, ushering in the next era of international trap music, one that fuses American regional subgenres like plugg, jerk, Memphis rap, and Chicago drill with global sounds like hyperpop and urbano. There’s less of a focus on genre as there is sonic cacophony: What would it sound like if you stuffed rage music, deep-fried ironic memes, and a sound effects board in a blender?
This sound has been brewing worldwide since the pandemic, marrying Gen Z’s uber-online sense of humor with the internet’s ability to transcend localized music scenes. It stands as a direct affront to the old-school rap music from Argentina and beyond. AgusFortnite2008 even says it himself on “24/7,” cracking a joke about the classic sounds of hip-hop: “No se que mierda es el boom bap, pero suena como el orto” — “I don’t know what the fuck boom bap is, but it sounds like shit.”
For Joshu Joshu — who has collaborated with the Swaggerboyz on songs like “Jesus Escucha Plug,” “ESTO ES ENCHUFE LA CHUPA EL HIP HOP,” and “FERNET” — this type of hypertrap offers a sense of careless freedom.
“I was doing boom-bap shit… like six years ago,” he says, speaking from his apartment in Buenos Aires. “And when I started, [everybody] was like, ‘No, you can’t use YouTube beats, you need to have a producer.’ ‘You can’t say corny shit.’”
Joshu Joshu and Stiffy grew up in the same neighborhood: Merlo, right outside of Buenos Aires. Instead of following in the footsteps of American legends like Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan, who rapped about their struggles, Joshu Joshu said he wanted to incorporate his sense of humor and his internet persona into his work.
“I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’m not a gangster,’” he explains. “We’re on the street for sure, but I’m not a gangster. So I’m gonna drop the ‘Joshua’ things —personal things, funny things. And I think that opened a portal.”
The on-mic personas of the Swaggerboyz also occupy a gray area between satire and genuine performance. On one tape, Stiffy becomes Stiffy Bravo, a parody of Cartoon Network’s beefy hunk, Johnny Bravo. On another, AgusFortnite2008 is a pitched-up Messiah of internet detritus named DJ MCLOVIN. Joshu Joshu’s tape PAYPAL JESUS ostensibly takes its name from one of his tattoos: a crude rendering of the PayPal logo sprawled over his stomach.
And even within these personas, the artists have their own distinct connections to U.S. music scenes. Stiffy’s work aligns more with the mid-aughts pop you might hear driving around the American South, with the synthesizers on “Celo” evoking T-Pain and Southern ringtone rap. AgusFortnite2008’s music is more disorienting, but takes cues from the early intensity of Waka Flocka Flame and his now-defunct label Brick Squad.
Joshu Joshu approaches his references more directly. He’s recently been rapping over some of the western world’s most popular songs of all time — Michael Jackson’s”Billie Jean,” Haddaway’s “What Is Love?”, and Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone” — with the intent to cause a bit of legal trouble. He found inspiration after releasing a bootleg PayPal T-shirt, which landed him in hot water with the brand.
“PayPal [gave me] a copyright issue and I was like, ‘Fuck it. I want to do a mixtape that’s a copyright issue case,’” he said, referencing his latest project, aptly titled Beat Da Case.
Whether it’s the 240p compression on the songs themselves or the mid-puberty rasp in the vocals, these tracks have an authentically D.I.Y. quality to them. These artists are eschewing the industry as we know it, often self-producing their music at home and providing their own method of success that shuns the Latin music machine. It’s a new and scrappy alternative to the pristine and sanitized reggaeton and urbano music that Americans often hear on the radio these days. It knocks Rauw Alejandro and Bad Bunny’s shiny, infallible representation of the diaspora off the pedestal.
In this chaos, there’s also a distinct, unique beauty that is hard to replicate. Stiffy and AgusFortnite2008’s fixation on classical music extends beyond the cover of MURIO LA MUSICA; “MÚSICA CLÁSICA” by Stiffy starts with a beautiful piano riff before devolving into soaring, hypnotic synthesizers that clip in your headphones. It stretches for something grand, a juxtaposition of artistry and traditionally derided sounds. It’s classical music for a new generation; it just happens to sound like it was made by the evil Minions from Despicable Me 2.
Anarchic Swaggerboyz shows in Buenos Aires draw massive crowds and they’re already starting to change the city’s music scene, though Stiffy would never admit it with a straight face. “The truth is, music in Buenos Aires these days is way better than before. I see it as Music 1.25, maybe a little more advanced,” he jokes. “But there’s way more to go, though it’s going down a good path.”
Still, Argentinian rappers have often struggled to break into the mainstream outside of their home country, but Joshu Joshu is hopeful that they are finally putting their sound on the map, finally matching what’s happening in the American underground. “I think that’s never happened before,” he said. “And I think that Stiffy, AgusFortnite, and me, we are the three that are pushing that shit to the same level.”
