Argentinian rapper Thunder He will visit us again shortly with a new single titled “Tranky Funk” under his arm. Specifically, we will be able to see it this coming Saturday at the PHE Festival from Tenerife to then pass through Seville and Granada.
The trajectory of Thunder -well, actually, his overwhelming career-, is marked by early success from his early years in the cockfights with which he toured the entire Spanish-speaking world, winning the title of national champion, which made him, as chef Dani García when he won his third Michelin Star, to dismantle the beach bar and begin to focus on his solo career. He is born in 2022 and has already had several lives. Like a stray cat, that he has managed to achieve virtue by devoting himself to music. A jazz cat, like in the Disney movie ‘The Aristocats’, which has gone from the slums to the global music board.
“There are quite a few things that one tries to combat that are present at any time, such as police abuse or neighborhood problems”
Thunder is an exception. Stopping being a freestyler to become an artist is something that many have tried and few have achieved. Certainly none like Thunder he has been able to reach a dimension beyond wit and freshness, a conceptual and profound dimension in its entirety. His 2022 album, ‘RIGHT OR WRONG’, is good proof of this. However, the Argentine has also been able to achieve star status thanks to his talent for crochet musical.
The punch of Thunder has made him embrace the local and the global in the same way: “The last record I made I feel very patriotic and from the place where I was born, but I have also taken it to Spain and throughout Latin America as well, and to Europe, Denmark, and I have felt the connection with all kinds of people. Taking those things in is crazy.”. This is how he has become an artist of the people, that he uses music to sing about the miseries of the neighborhoods: “There are quite a few things that one tries to combat that are present at any time, such as police abuse or neighborhood problems. That has been forever. The change is tried to be made from art because it is a social tool, not a political one. Music can make you change the way you think and create a change.”
He knows a lot about the neighborhoods Thunder and not only from Argentina. His latest release, ‘DUABI’, together with the Barcelona drill star Beny Jr., is good proof that when faced with borders, the needs and experiences of those who need it most are universal. “Me and Beny Jr. are separated by many kilometers and continents, but we have a very similar way of loving our neighborhood and our people, and of moving, in terms of codes, that too. That makes us enjoy each other’s music and that’s what we want to communicate. The same is a Spanish immigrant neighborhood, a working-class neighborhood, than an Argentine immigrant neighborhood. I feel that if he had been born in Spain it would be in a neighborhood like La Florida, and I feel that if Beny Jr. had been born there, in Argentina it would be a neighborhood like La Boca”.
“Hiphop and rap is who I am and what defines me the most and what I will always do, but I am also a musician”
The union with Beny Jr. is not the only recent collaboration of Thunder with Spanish artists. It was added to ‘5:05’, one of the most popular songs from Leïti’s latest album. And it is that “Since the first time, before releasing my music, I came here to compete, in Spain they have treated me great. I’m a fan of the artists here and the tours always turn out amazing and that makes me always want to come back”. A tour that this year has made him perform at some of the biggest festivals in the country, among which, of course, stands out the Primavera Sound: “I was impressed by the variety of audiences, so many styles and so much culture, so many different countries. In that you can tell that it is a huge festival ”.
Trueno has traveled the world singing, and that will also have repercussions on his following releases: “When you’re on tour you’re in that aura of euphoria and creativity. When I run into someone at a festival, anything can happen. The music that I made as I toured, and had the opportunity to record in many different countries, is already in the oven and will be out soon. That experience gave each song a really different aura.”
And it is that Thunder he is an artist of the world. He has the one from La Boca with a very broad fan base, reaching different ages and a public related, usually, to styles of music far removed from hip hop and rap that have marked his career: “I think the records I put out made me connect with different types of audiences and with previous generations. It is important not to stay alone in one place, but to move, and what one learns is also able to take it to other places. Hiphop and rap is who I am and what defines me the most and what I will always do, but I am also a musician”.
Thunder: musician, rapper, Argentine and worldwide; brave enough to abandon the discipline that crowned him the best and launch himself into composing and singing, not only for his own but for everyone. That vocation for universality, that constancy, mark the trajectory of an artist who outgrew the neighborhood but only to return to it, over and over again, from anywhere on the planet, from any corner where some kids rap and improvise in a circle