hip-hop

Criolo

1 upcoming festival

São Paulo rapper who moves freely between hip-hop, samba and MPB — dense, unsparing portraits of the city delivered with a singer's phrasing.

Criolo is the stage name of Kleber Cavalcante Gomes, a rapper and singer born in 1975 and raised in the Grajaú district on the southern edge of São Paulo. He spent years in the city's rap scene before breaking through more widely, and his work has since drawn on samba, MPB, reggae and Afrobeat alongside hip-hop.

His writing focuses on São Paulo itself — inequality, violence, love and everyday life in the periphery — delivered in a voice that shifts between rapping and singing. The 2011 album Nó na Orelha, which included "Não Existe Amor em SP", brought him attention well beyond the rap audience and established him as one of the more widely respected Brazilian artists of his generation.

hip-hop