Like a gator under the moon, the boy’s eyes seemed to brighten behind his balaclava, as if police searchlights were drawn to the gaps in the fabric. Chirps from Baofeng UV-5Rs and Motorola Talkabouts ricocheted through the alleys of Sāo Paulo’s four zones at the speed of scheming. Echolocation, counter-surveillance, control. The gang chatter joined the infinite rhythms testing the resolve of club walls across the city; their radio signals coordinated a different kind of motion than the dancing at the bailes.
This is the scene CESRV sets on Atividade — a reflective homage to friends chasing illicit and sonic adrenaline b2b, night after night, back home in SP. (The artist-producer born Cesar Pierri currently resides in Italy.) It’s a freewheeling game he grew up adjacent to: contramão versus mão certa, the wrong way versus the right way. Released on Tijolo Records, the album is Cesar’s first full-length solo project in a career that doubles as Brasilian music history. Here, his production choices amount to a danceable tension. Funk, drill, rap, garage, and grime collide at a 140 pace.
Raised by his late father’s guitar, queer club nights, walkie talkie static, leftist hip-hop soundtracks, and early turns in metal and jam bands, inspiration was as thick as shoreside air for Cesar. His Beatwise label redrew the blueprint for Brasilian electronic producers and forged international alliances, collaborating with DJ Rashad just two weeks before the Chicago icon’s passing; his 2021 BRIME! wave, kicked off alongside Febem and Fleezus, linked the Brasil and British undergrounds. Atividade’s the most razor-sharp distillation of his talent so far, an inherently political effort that honors Cesar’s longstanding approach: beliefs and beats are inseparable.
Much of the music we know and love from Brasil emerged in defiance of foreign intervention — the Portuguese and their slave trade, the CIA’s installed dictactors and IMF interest rates. Unlike in the U.S., slaves in Brasil kept their drums, weaving additional rhythms (candomblé, capoeira, samba, ijexá) into the nation’s fabric. In quilombos, effectively runaway slave camps, indigenous people and poor whites also received safe harbor, enshrining cross-culture unity. World-renowned icons like Gilberto Gil were exiled by their own army for their anti-authoritarian stances. CESRV, who calls Atividade militant, proudly aligns himself with the lineage of populist arts movements.
Three years ago, CESRV contributed to the first Liner Notes story we ever published, written by the great Felipe Maia. (Xhjyl, who curated the music in that piece from CESRV, VHOOR, LARINHX, and EVEHIVE, once again played an integral role in making this one happen. I’m grateful for his collaboration.) We had a blast reuniting with Cesar to dig deeper into his story.
Buy his album Atividade and listen while you read <3
Siber: Do you remember the first song you have on SoundCloud
CESRV: Not even a little bit. [Laughs] Play it?
*Plays “all u need to kno” by CESRV from 2016*
CESRV: Okay, okay, this actually isn’t the first song I uploaded, but it’s the first song I allowed to stay there. Look at this photo, man! It’s from a club in Rio de Janeiro called Fosfobox. I took that in the bathroom. [Laughs]
Siber: Was it around that time when DJ Rashad visited you in Brasil
CESRV: Yes, we had booked Rashad to play a party. When he flew down, we brought him to our studio C4, where we all came together every day. Houses down here are often laid out around a courtyard — we’d have hella producers cooking outside for hours, laptops out. I’d have my MPC. Rashad and I spent his first day outside, talking, smoking weed. [Laughs] The second day, we ended up making a track. DJ Spinn came to São Paulo the next year and I gave him the track, but he got robbed in Peru — they took his computer, everything, so we lost that one. I had a copy of what Rashad and I had made on my hard drive, and it sat there for two years. Then Taso came to visit us, we became friends, and we finished it.
Siber: Chicago and SP unite. That’s a special pocket of history, that bridge between TekLife and the early days of Beatwise.
CESRV: I started listening to Rashad around 2010 or 2011. When we finally met, it was in 2014, only two weeks before he passed away. He played in Brasil, then Mexico, then back to Chicago where he died. When they visited, Rashad and Spinn didn’t know too much about what was going on in São Paulo at the time, but they really listened to what we were doing. A lot of people on tour came through — Baauer, Nightmare On Wax — and that’s how our music started to spread. Look, Brasil’s far as fuck. It’s been hard, historically, to export our work. Brasilian funk’s been going off around the world the past few years, but it started in the 80s or 90s. It took 30 years. I think our gay scene, our LGBT scene, our funk scene, are starting see some artists breaking through, but it’s hard.
Siber: Four years ago, you said something to the effect of, “The world’s finally paying attention to us, but only in superficial ways.”
CESRV: It’s still superficial. The real underground funk producers are making next-level shit. But if you go to SoundCloud, you’re seeing everybody tagging their music “funk carioca” or “baile funk” when there’s so many different kinds of funk. We don’t even say “baile” in Brasil. [Laughs] I get that “funk” in America is a 70s-style genre, so it’s a little more appropriate for a global understanding, but if you’re playing really raw shit from Brasil, people outside won’t get it. They’ll say it’s too much, too raunchy, too hard, too sexual. But that’s what it is in Brasil — almost gothic. The sped-up funk is what’s breaking through, but there’s a lot of really dark, low-energy funk too.
Siber: Did the Lebanese community in Brasil play any role in your music-making? There’s also been such a vibrant experimental and electronic music scene in Beirut, and I was wondering if you ever experienced a tie-in?
CESRV: They were all in the baile listening to funk with us. [Laughs] One thing’s for sure, if you ask me, Febem and Fleezus, we’re all gonna say our favorite food is Arabic food. [Laughs] Have you seen the mascot for Habib's [a giant Lebanese food chain in Brasil, founded by a Portuguese man]? It’s not great. Not the best choice. [Laughs] Brasil culture is dominant over anything else, but there’s still so many within that.
Siber: Like Italian culture… Speaking of which, have you heard this?
CESRV: [Laughs] I know this. That shit’s going off. This is TikTok music. I can’t blame other people for trying to do funk. Brasilian rap was very hard to do at the beginning because English, it’s an Anglo-Saxon language, so it has all of these consonants. It’s so percussive. Romantic languages are about vowels. Our adaptation took awhile to get right. American rap is still the biggest, but there’s now great rap music coming from everywhere. A lot of it sucks also, though. [Laughs] I remember when Americans made fun of drill from other countries just because these other artists had an accent…
Siber: Right, then think about how the world feels about American accents.
CESRV: As much as funk, baile funk, has spread beyond Brasil, I still think it’ll be awhile before it’s as ingrained in everything as rap’s become. If I do a footwork project, people will say, “Oh, it’s a Brasilian making footwork.” If I do it with Brasilian samples, people will say, “Oh that’s fire!” If we don’t do it the Brasilian way, it’ll be looked at like copying. When Sango made Da Rocinha, people were like, “Who’s that gringo trying to make Brasilian music,” saying shit about him. And then everyone copied Sango! He introduced a new language.
Siber: All of these ideas of what a place ‘should’ sound like, what a genre is, identity — it’s a bunch of symbols clashing together. You can look at who’s involved with Sango’s followups to Da Rocinha and see what his intentions are.
CESRV: He made an active effort to collaborate with the favelas in Brasil and larger artists, too. So many people still think Brasilian culture is about bossa nova, which was just the exported version of samba. Brasil spreads across the world through futebol, through music, but it’s always this washed-out version, this hyper-simplified thing. In a way it’s just like someone who still thinks “terrorist” when they hear “Arab,” even with what’s going down in Gaza. Everyone has the resources, in the internet era, to challenge their own assumptions, and to build a relationship with the actual music, culture, scene, history, whatever, that’s inspiring your shit.
Siber: The team behind TraTraTrax, out of Colombia, has spoken about being promoted, booked, and written about as this exotic flavor-of-the-month label, in an interview with Shawn Reynaldo. They were receiving one-off support, this fleeting internet music tourism, rather than sustained coverage.
CESRV: Right. There’s too many levels to only listen like that. There’s the classic carioca funk that evolved into the contemporary “baile” in Rio de Janeiro. It went to São Paulo through the shore side: Santos and other coastal cities started to pay attention to funk, which then led to Sao Paulo, which was very hip-hop, very electronic, in the early 2000s. In the 2010s, they developed what we’d call funk ostentation: talking about wealth, clothes, cars, even if they didn’t have it. It was “we’re gonna make it” music, which was the opposite of what hip-hop heads cared about back then. Funk felt cheesy, like the early garage days in the UK, but then it developed into a culture and the bailes started happening in the São Paulo favelas. I remember dudes saying to me, “Out of 10 cars in the hood, one’s playing hip-hop, and nine are playing funk.” That was the turning point. Now, we have kids at the baile who are bringing the LGBT culture, hip-hop culture, electronic culture, hood culture, all blended together. In São Paulo’s south zone, you have more raw, rave electronic. In the north zone and east zone, you have the Mandelao rhythm style with the tamborzão sample. The LGBT scene blends techno, house. When we did BRIME! we blended grime with UKG, drum and bass, footwork…
Siber: Multiple portals. It’s not just avoiding getting boxed in as an artist, it’s offering more doors for different listeners. On top of sounding refreshing.
CESRV: It’s natural. And as time’s passed, it’s become even more accepted to pull from various styles. Everything interacts with and evolves from everything else. Funk’s blended into everything in Brasil like rap has been in the U.S. Plenty of artists who aren’t funkeiros still pull from funk to make rave, like you had EDM artists taking Atlanta trap drum packs. This was black party music that turned into countrywide popular music and then flowed into almost every other style. When I was starting out, the hip-hop heads were Wu-Tang and NWA purists. [Laughs] We had battle rappers getting a lot of attention. Rio was an LA vibe, and São Paulo was a NYC vibe. Now we have trap funk. Sango started doing the chill baile thing — mixing trap, funk, deep house, R&B. The nerds loved it. The Bandcamp kids started making beats like that and it became a culture, but the rap beat makers didn’t know about it because it was all online. Now trap funk is massive. Kids might not know Travis Scott but they know all their local trap artists, and that’s how you get these songs with millions of streams that no one outside of our cities has ever heard of. We prioritize our own neighborhoods, musically.
Siber: Has the Spanish-Portuguese language barrier contributed to that?
CESRV: Absolutely. We’re isolated because everyone around us speaks Spanish, and Brasil’s also bigger than all of our neighbors, so we’re very self-aware. Brasilian culture consumes itself: music blows up and dies before it ever crosses into other countries. A Brasilian artist who’s perceived as ‘big’ outside of Brasil might actually have fewer opportunities at home than someone else, but more touring internationally. It’s crazy.
Siber: Where do you think your ear’s curiosity comes from?
CESRV: A lot of people are products of their neighborhood, of one scene, but I got to grow up around different pockets in São Paulo. I was a graffiti writer in high school, up to nothing good, then I met these kids who had a band and some studio equipment. Their house was in a wealthy area, maybe 30 minutes from me. We had become friends, so they invited me over and I saw these guys with guitars, doing shows in small clubs with girls around, while all my other friends were out all night, picking fights, selling drugs. My father played the guitar and he had taught me a little bit, so I picked one up. This was 2000, 2001. Maybe my hair was longer. [Laughs] I never expected to make a career out of it because my dad didn’t have good experiences with the music world. Back then, it was just a way to have fun. These kids introduced me to another band in high school who needed a roadie. I knew how to tune guitars, set drums up. Then their second guitarist left the band and they asked me to fill his spot.
Siber: Are we talking emotional cutter music, shoe gaze, punk
CESRV: Metal, bro. I went from tagging walls to straight metal. I was in that band for a year and a half, around 2004, 2005. I remember one day suggesting we try hip-hop influences, and they were like, “Fuck that, that’s some shitty ass music.” So I left the band. [Laughs] Still, it changed my life. The next two years I spent learning how to surf and skateboard, playing acoustic guitar with other homies. Around this time, my mom had passed away, and my friends were smoking crack. All I wanted was to make music outside of the mainstream.
Siber: What did that sound like to you at the time?
I wanted to be Madlib, or DJ Shadow — hip-hop, ambient, underground rap — and producers in Brasil were making these really cool jazzy beats. It was around 2008 that I really got good at Fruity Loops and started producing my own stuff. A few of us made another band, an instrumental jam band called Grooverdose, which went from 200 cap venues to performing at Universo Paralello [a psychedelic festival in Costa do Dendê, Bahia, about 1000 km north of São Paulo]. We’d play for three hours, all night long, inviting different MCs up on stage, and I introduced a sampler to our set. That was the moment I said, “Okay, I can really do it.” I was already working for the studio, FlapC4, too, where I started interning in 2009 and worked until 2017. That environment is what really led me to becoming an artist. Before that, I was just trying to pay bills.
Siber: Did your dad share a story or guidance with you about his music struggle?
CESRV: He said, “Never become a DJ because you’ll lose your life in the club, but if you become a producer, that’s okay”. I remember him interrogating me one day, like, “Where’d you get all this money! Are you selling drugs again?”
Siber: What did you say back?
CESRV: That I was working! He said, “No you’re not, you’re sitting at your computer all day!” When he actually visited the studio, that’s what helped him start to get it.
Siber: You’re going from a receiver of music horror stories, to a bandmate, to an engineer, to a producer — at what point do you start identifying as an artist?
CESRV: It was this mix of years of devotion and a specific moment. Everything’s happening in São Paulo. If you’re born there you’re a sicko. [Laughs] You walk out your front door and you’re seeing these big artists doing the same shit you’re doing, buying sandwiches from the same spots, like Estadão, at 4am. Things seem possible. So the commitment I had to music within that environment, connecting with legendary people in the city who started to know my music, it all’s proof. Then, after 10 years in the studio, we put BRIME! out, and I was like, “Alright, I’m an artist. I know what I’m doing.”
Siber: It feels much rarer now to have so much experience before really stepping out on your own two feet, covering so much ground musically.
CESRV: New artists can have a lot of eyes and ears on them but no background. Like, millions of streams or followers while still learning how to do a show on the spot. We had time to breathe and cut our teeth at the baile, at parties, where the performance was really the point. And because I was around so much, nothing felt off limits. Making footwork with DJ Rashad and funk music with grime MCs makes sense if you’re used to performing in a jam band then listening to trap with your homies in the hood in the same night. I’ll never say something’s not worth listening to. I’m too curious.
Siber: Which really culminates in your Beatwise label…
CESRV: It was a space for us to say, “We can define what our sound is.” If we used foreign or external references, we’d show what it means to make it in our country, and that left a mark. I think we were somewhere between Low End Theory and Soulection for electronic music, internet music, in Brasil, in South America. I think it helped redefine what it meant to be a producer, what electronic music can sound like, from where we’re from. Like, nobody was playing trap music in their sets [Laughs]. Now look at Carlos Do Complexo, who took Da Rocinha and does it his own way. VHOOR, Bad Sista, Carlos, Sants, SonoTWS, Febre 90s who’s bringing boom bap back to Brasil… all of these people who released with us, who were just hanging out in the courtyard together, performing back to back at Colab011 the first Friday night of every month — they played such an important role in our underground. There are artists in Rio, in Belo Horizonte, who grew up on Beatwise, which is crazy to me.
Siber: What was it like for you figuring out the money side as a label
CESRV: We’d take the money we made from Bandcamp and either reinvest it to print shirts, for example, and make more money, or we’d keep it in PayPal and never touch it. Back then, when we were just kids, 25 years old, we’d ask friends if they wanted to work with us, we’d throw events, and split the money upfront. We didn’t know what an ISRC was. [Laughs] I remember when Enchufada approached Bad Sista for a remix and they wanted to give us a cut of the fee — it was like 5000 reais, about $1000 — and I was like, “Keep it all, get your money.” That was our mentality. Nowadays, Beatwise is really just a name that I use to release music I make with MCs I produce through EMPIRE, because we have Tijolo Records going on now. I remember back when I was a resident DJ earning 350 reais for a 1.5 hour or two-hour set, about $80 now but $125 at the time. I’d go on at 4am, 5am, and close the party with my SP-404, but I’d get there at 9pm and leave at 9am. Xhjyl failed classes because I’d tell him to come and he’d stay the full 12 hours with me. [Laughs] This was after we met through SoundCloud DMs.
Siber: Did you make Atividade in the same neighborhoods your career started in?
CESRV: A lot of it I made in the countryside on the outskirts of São Paulo, in 2023, when I was staying with my dad before he passed away.
Siber: Did your dad have a chance to hear Atividade?
CESRV: He didn’t really understand my music, but he was proud. One of the hardest things I ever told my dad was that I didn’t build this music shit on love, at first, but on hate. Bad feelings. Lacking stuff. In a subliminal way, in every track, we bring a lot of people with us. That’s why BRIME! is so powerful. Me, Febem, and Fleezus channeling not just our lives but so many others in the beats, the lyrics. Even in the electronic music. Atividade was kinda like me looking back at BRIME! and updating my own vision for what rap, funk, drill, and garage could sound like together.
Siber: What’s at the heart of the album, for you?
CESRV: For me, as a person, I think it was really about letting the past go. Making a tribute to a lot of friends still living this life. We talk weekly, monthly. They’ll always be my friends. But nowadays my life is so different. I live in a small town in Italy, speaking Italian to old grandmas, then I open my Instagram and I see my friends buying whiskey in the clubs. [Laughs] I’ll go two weeks without drinking now, only doing that at shows. Even while making this music back home, because I was at my dad’s, it was a different life. It was cleansing to tell me my own story at a distance. Right now, I’m working on a project that tries to turn 1990s and 2000s Brasilian rap into house music. I don’t like most of it so far. [Laughs] But I’m excited just to see where it goes and make something for people who lived through that era like I did and understand the references.
Siber: That’s a special idea. There’s this double pressure for artists outside of Europe, the global north, yada yada, to make music that’s ‘unique’ and ‘authentic’ while so many artists from those areas, my area, can just go on making careers out of cloning each other or taking ideas from the global south without credit.
CESRV: We like techno, house, the same way, but we can’t just make techno or house the ‘regular’ way. Something went viral in Brasil recently — a video of a very famous actress who’s received awards all over the world. She was saying how hard it was to talk to anyone outside of Brasil because they don’t know our writers, like Jorge Amado, or our composers from the 70s like Nascimento, Veloso, Gill. The depth of our culture. It’s the same thing with Arabic culture. There’s a delayed appreciation. VHOOR went viral for his Boiler Room at Primavera this year, but he’s been playing that set for two years in Brasil! There’s a track in there that he made just to play at the first Baile do Brime. It’s cool to see people in Europe dancing to those tracks, but it really just makes me miss home. There’s no Lot Radio. You have to actually go to the parties. Boiler Room will expose you to 3% of what’s happening in Brasil. There’s so many kids doing madness in Fruity Loops, making great tracks with cheap-ass headphones.
Siber: Have you experienced being typecasted, where European bookers will hit you up and basically say, “Do that Brasilian thing you do”?
CESRV: It’s funny, when I’m in Brasil, I don’t even play much funk in my sets because I don’t 100% belong to that culture — I’m friends with a lot of people who are. We’re learning from each other. But I saw so many people outside the culture playing baile funk, I was like, “Alright, I might as well play it too.” I did one show where Slimzee and Riko Dan played before me. After I played my set, Riko looked at me and said, “Wicked brother, respect.” I was playing a set he didn’t understand fully, but within my style — he heard references to breakbeat, garage, grime — and that felt special. He’s a grime legend. What you’re describing does happen, and it is kind of shitty to be expected to just do this one thing, because Brasilian music has so many styles. It’s like asking an Arabic DJ to play one little bit of Arabic music forever. But the DJ market is also so burnt out, so it’s normal to look for one thing to stand out. And if a European DJ can travel the world by playing nothing but techno, funk DJs should be able to do the same, making a living playing for 300-cap clubs. That’s what’s up.
Siber: The last time you contributed to a Liner Notes story, in 2021, part of the focus was on the pressure artists feel to leave Brasil to make a living from music.
CESRV: There’s so much incredible music happening back home. But from the outside looking in, most people still think of Brasil as beach, ass, samba, maybe funk. Even in Brasil, the most popular genre isn’t funk, it’s sertanejo, which is like country music, that’s primarily listened to in the rural and agricultural parts of the country. Funk was pretty much just Rio’s music through the late 90s, early 2000s, before it traveled to Juiz da Fora, in Minas Gerais, which is just above Rio toward the countryside, then on to Belo Horizonte, where funk looks like grime. It’s hard. Between Rio, Belo Horizonte, and São Paulo, you get this political power triangle, everything feeds into each other.
Siber: I really appreciate you and Xhjyl always being so generous offering context, hopefully without feeling like you’re a tour guide for an outsider. Without having visited there or speaking the language, you try your best to piece together what you can. Between the balaclava artwork of Atividade and the pace, I immediately thought of state surveillance. Evasion.
CESRV: I think it’s both. In “Monitorado,” it’s saying in slang that everything is under surveillance, that what’s happening in the hood will be on the radio. But here it’s a reference to the walkie talkies drug dealers use to know what’s going on. One lyric on that song is from MC Rodson. Another is from the grime artist SD9. I combined them to make a new couplet. You know, the kids in the trap and drill scenes love wearing the balaclava, of course. The BRIME! project made it more normal to wear football, soccer kits — it’s not just a ‘hoodlum’ thing anymore. It’s a fashion statement. All of the tracks on Atividade deal with drugs, parties, baile, improving your life, self-esteem, political statements… Everything we do is political.
Siber: Is it a kind of populism that makes the music ‘threatening’
CESRV: Yes. It uplifts people. It’s prayer. With our background, we didn’t really have time to feel sorry for ourselves, I guess. We just had to go do it, you know? You see a chance to change your life and take it. I hope people get that from my music. You take one step, then one more… It's why I’m still here. People will still comment on our video for “YIN YANG” like… “2023… the world still sucks.... keep going” “November 2024… shit is not good... don’t give up” [Laughs] There’s this scene in City of God where the kid has this idea of robbing a store and they just do it. That was on my mind when I made “Contramão,” which means’ the wrong way.’ There’s a line on there from Felipe Boladão, an MC from Santos, who would rhyme about gangster shit on funk beats. The cops killed him, and a bunch of other rappers from the shore side. Before they killed him, Boladão had a song about not wanting to go the wrong way. That’s just the reality on our doorstep. It’s a very tense track with the strings.
Siber: Has the government co-opted funk and drill?
CESRV: Under Bolsonaro [the previous Brasilian leader], there were a lot of people in the funk and rap scenes who didn’t say anything about politics because they’re afraid of losing popularity. There’s a term we have, pobre de direita, for right-wing people with little money. Poor people used to lean leftist, but now people look at Lula [da Silva, the current Brasilian leader] as a communist who’s going to rob their house. There’s a lot of misinformation about what being left or right wing even means. The political strength of music in the country feels diluted. I do feel sorry for the people who don’t know what rap and funk music is. A lot of artists are just about the hype, so they don’t take risks.
Siber: Who are the exceptions for you?
CESRV: MC Hariel is always speaking his mind and making great funk music. Mano Brown, who’s like the godfather of rap in Brasil, is a hardline leftist and has been a big inspiration for all of us. Daniel Ganjaman, a producer who worked on lots of big records in the 2000s, will beef with the right wing on Twitter. But most people are afraid of losing followers, so they just play the character. There’s a lot of poverty, and poverty makes it easier to get into peoples’ heads, which the right-wing has done a great job taking advantage of. Sometimes you have to play dumb and just get to work. But if you have the ability to speak out, you really should, even if there are consequences. There was one company that was trying to do an ad with Febem and Fleezus. They got to the final step, then one of the execs looked at one of their Instagrams and saw a photo of them wearing a Palestine shirt in their feed. He cancelled the whole project. Fleezus is super connected with the Palestine FC guys, which we’d be wearing all the time during the BRIME! era. In the videos, at the performances. We still have those pictures up.
Siber: The international order strikes again.
CESRV: That’s Brasil man. The Brasilian record industry was started by the American companies coming down here to make money from their lower-quality vinyl. A lot of older music is hard to find because of that, and because of the tropical weather. During the dictatorship in the 60s, it was a similar thing, where some artists protested the government through music, and others toed the party line. There’s always been socialist organizing here. Lula first rose to power fighting for the rural and urban poor. When he was first president he instated Bolsa Família, which was like UBI.
Siber: Public healthcare was in the constitution in the 90s right?
CESRV: Sistema Único de Saúde. Yes. Anyone, whether they’re a citizen of Brasil or not, gets free treatment at our public hospitals. Brasil’s also one of the most online countries — Facebook, then YouTube, now TikTok. Like, baile blew up because of meme culture here, which in a way is like the music of Gilberto Gil or Caetano Veloso and the Tropicália stuff, or before it, antropofagismo. It wasn’t just “fuck the government,” but like, “We are Brasilians, we have to organize for ourselves.” You had the quilombos camps and the unifying music that came from them. Look at samba de roda — everyone in a circle, contributing something. That’s the foundation of our entire culture. Just like America, we had a big African diaspora because of slavery. The big difference is that in America, they took their drums, and Brasil, the slaves could keep their drums. That’s why we have Escola de Samba. Candomblé and capoeira rhythms.
Siber: Would you say your album’s militant?
CESRV: Yes. Every song. To be honest, even if an MC is only doing rap or funk because they’re trying to get famous, there’s still something a little militant to it. Every hood kid that’s a star right now is doing politics. It just might not be the kind I agree with. House and techno are extremely political in Brasil with the LGBT community.
Siber: You’ve been so generous with your time and brain power today — I’d love to wrap up by focusing back on Atividade. What about it are you most proud of?
CESRV: I’ll tell you straight. 10 years ago, when I was in the studio, I’d be proud of techniques. Now, I’m proud of ideas. Do I enjoy this? Would I just play it out, or would I listen on my own too? Atividade is an album I’d listen to. I feel like a common error producers can make is getting caught up in, like, “I need to make this snare sound like Kendrick Lamar’s, or Katrayanda’s.” You might have a great snare in a shitty song. [Laughs] I’m proud these songs work together, from first to last, as a sonic shock.
Siber: What was a challenge you had to work through?
CESRV: All of my projects are about an environment. I struggle to think of them as singular things that I have to promote, that require new press photos and posts. It’s me trying to spread our culture however I can, in a way that feels true and right to me.
Siber: Do you identify with being “underground” in 2025?
CESRV: When we’re talking about my background, I would. Now, we’re closer to the mainstream, and you see these artists right ahead of you with these crazy numbers, and I respect the hell out of that. But I never really wanted to be that dude. I wanted to be right here. I have credits on mainstream records in Brasil, and they make me some money, but that’s not my ambition. If I love an artist as a person, I’d sit down with them and write pop music. But the music that represents me and everything I’ve been through, from electronic to drill, funk to garage… it’s not chasing anything.
Siber: Whatever game there is to be played, Atividade seems fully unbothered.
CESRV: You make what you make. [Tijolo Records founder] Akilez and I were just talking about it, that you never know who might be listening to the music. The first track I did for Atividade, it didn’t even make the album. But it wasn’t just a beat — the idea felt bigger. I made 10 tracks for it and landed at seven. They told the story. Orgânico.
Siber: What’s funny is that for other artists and producers coming up, you’re probably that guy who’s really listening, who takes them by surprise
CESRV: Me and Xhjyl were just talking about this. 2014, 2015, felt like the golden age on SoundCloud and Bandcamp to me, then Spotify invested heavily, and as much good music as there is, I feel like we’re still in this ice age for labels. Now most people listen to music on TikTok. I’ll still follow DJs on Instagram, look at their releases, the people they share lineups with, SoundCloud, Bandcamp… I don’t just want to play SoundCloud edits at my shows. [Laughs] I have six USBs full of different stuff. And if I’m playing an edit, it’s mine. I want to play new music, not just what’s already known.
CESRV gets paid the second you buy Atividade on Catalog.
