Sao Paulo: KL Jay, DJ Cia, DJ Nuts & Cinara

It's important to explain something: São Paulo is the largest city in South America, a megalopolis with 20 million residents that is staggering in its scope and dark, problematic beauty. It's been compared frequently to a tropical incarnation of Blade Runner, with almost every block of the city's centre, which goes on for miles and miles, featuring a concrete skyscraper. As regular folks sit in traffic or on buses below, São Paulo's significant number of mega-rich zoom above them on personal helicopters, preferring not to step foot on the ground below. On the outside of the city, poor neighbourhoods go on and on, supplying the labour for the state capital, and usually, most of its cultural inspiration.

It's here that Brazilian hip hop was born and grew up. Hip hop here, both musically and culturally, has its own local features that are different from the scenes in the rest of the world -- and definitely different from the culture in the US, which first inspired Brazil's movement.

On the 12th of February, Boiler Room is proud to present sets from 3 legends, and one up-and-comer that have one foot or the other squarely in this culture. KL Jay, the DJ behind legendary rap group Racionais MCs, still as active as ever since forming in the city's outskirts slums in the 80s, and one of the continent's best DJs. NUTS, another of Brazil's most renowned DJs, represents the old guard of Brazilian diversity and tropical flavour, with a special set of Brazilian music with a hip hop touch. CIA is a founding member of rap group RZO and now traveling “vilão dos toca-discos,” while Cinara is widely celebrated wunderkind and represents the new generation.