CultureStrike: Global Beats, Decolonized Minds

My profile of Mexican hiphop artists Bocafloja was published yesterday in CultureStrike, a magazine covering the intersection of arts and migration.

Over a coffee in New York, Bocafloja talked about the origins of hiphop in Mexico City in the 1990s, how he built a collective that transgresses borders and his new album “Cumbé“.

You can read the full piece here.

“’It was almost accidental,’ says Bocafloja, on how he got into hiphop as a teenager in the 1990s.

‘Whenever migrant workers returned from the U.S. they would bring back music,’ explains the Mexico City-born hip hop artist, who now lives in New York City. Back then, home for many migrants was Ciudad Nezahuacoyotl, the informal settlement-turned-city that straddles the eastern edge of the Mexican capital. Bocafloja explains that Neza, as it is known, was ‘an enclave of immigration, and one of the early centers of hiphop in Mexico.’ The connection wasn’t coincidental; hiphop taking root on Mexican soil had everything to do with migration.”