Album cover: Ian Sanz / Design: Pepe Menéndez. 06/01 / EIDI
The first time I heard about Abel David Sardiñas (aka EIDI) was in an edition of the event “Growing up in hip hop”, of the Cuban Rap Agency. A Colombian cultural promoter was invited, who offered an educational talk to the children and adolescents present there, and I remember being pleasantly surprised by the eloquent response given by a still very young Abel David to an apparently simple question, but which provoked the silence and bewilderment, even, of veteran artists: what does the word rap mean? I confess that I did not know more about this MC until some time had passed, already in full confinement due to COVID-19, when, thanks to important digital platforms such as URBE, Arte de Esquina, among others, I was able to follow his artistic career.
With this debut album, EIDI is committed to launching an ordeal —as if it were a card game— in pursuit of an ontological search. The pieces prove it. One more day, How sad, EIDI, working and flowers and scars, where I discover a certain autobiographical, identity spirit, at the stroke of trap, soul, rock, trova, “pastilla” and boom bap. But the references are multiple and varied: Greek mythology, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (or the film Matrix?), Silvio Rodríguez, Joaquín Sabina, among others. Hip hop culture has existed for more than 20 years in Cuba, therefore, it becomes a complex cultural text, and generational dynamics become more evident, especially in the discursive.
In this young artist, however, the musical DNA manages to prevail, since his grandfather was a sudden singer and his father is a moñero and a dancer from breakdance. It's encouraging that topics like feet on the ground, Put it or Politically incorrect (in my opinion, axis o a leitmotiv of the album) offer us a good reason to analyze what happens philosophically with our young people and their views in the midst of so much infoxication, appropriations of capital in the Cuban cultural field / protagonism in the vital sensibility of our time, interior universes and ideo-aesthetic discourses regarding to the hiphop community. It is worth clarifying that there are previous albums and pieces with this same logic; I'm thinking about When the morning listens to me, by Alejandro Cuello Herrera (The Lyrical Poet), The architects of conscience, by Roberto Hernández (El Cid) and Clones for my city, from the Hermanazos group, to name a few.
On a global level, a cultural phenomenon has been happening for some years: from great sound spirits like Tupac, Notorious BIG, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent (all from the gangsta rap style) are derived others like Kanye West, Drake, Future, J.Cole, Juice WRLD, Frank Ocean, Lil Nas X... They even handle data as precise as Kanye West exterminating gangsta rap, or at least radically changing the mainstream Hiphoppa on September 11, 2007 with his album Graduation, which sold 957,000 copies in the United States in its first week alone, ruthlessly sweeping Curtis, 50 Cent's third LP (691,000 copies). I mean, I know perceives the evolution from a “hard” rap to a more introspective one.
In this sense, and saving the geopolitical and mercantile distances, pI can venture to say that 06/01 It is in our country a referential phonogram, since it moves within the so-called nerdcore hip hop and emotional hip hop or emo-rap. it is semiotically demonstrated in the depth of its texts and cover, in which intimate fragments of family life appear —as if from a loop genealogical in question—as well as in the use of a playful typography, not so usual in the hiphop iconography of the patio.
Although it is a common denominator in new rappers, sometimes the flow of EIDI shows a certain tendency to remain flat, without variations, something that would have to be focused on in the future. Nothing I can't get over. In the musical production Tobías Alfonso, JD Asere, Museweed, José Señaris, Chezca Zana, Rey, Dunno, Adam Font and Los Noventa worked together, who wisely managed to combine classic genres and styles (boom bap, rock, soul) with others more contemporary (drill, trap, lo-fi hip hop), which is evident in the final themes Behind and lower him 2.
The response offered at that time by the young MC to the Colombian promoter has temporarily transcended, and continues to surprise me: EIDI gives us a first sincere phonogram, which says that history is not only made up of factual elements, but also by common mentalities of an era, while becoming a sound material that helps us understand (us).
