Free Download: Manuvers & Yarlen – The Drive Home EP

Don’t let your preconceptions misguide you. Just because a Latino is doing hip-hop out of Miami, FL, it doesn’t mean it will sound anything like corny-ass Pitbull.

Chilean DJ/producer Manuvers has a selective ear for the most refined sounds in the ample hip-hop spectrum. He’s well known in South America for laying down the beats for notable microphone-controllers like Argentina’s Mustafa Yoda and Chile’s Ana Tijoux, among many others. However in the US, where he currently resides, he has kept healthy distance from the Latin hip-hop niche while reaching out to the most demanding in the progressive underground hip-hop heads instead.

For this new project, released by Chilean net-label Discos Pegaos, we find him paired up with a gorgeous Miami native: Yarlen Ferreira. Once again, don’t judge the book by its cover, just because she has a pretty face, it doesn’t mean she’s a catchy-pop-hooks singer. Indeed, she doesn’t even get close to the microphone on the EP, and expresses herself through the electro, futuristic synths she adds to the mix.

The result is a dark, future-funk, experimental electronic multilayered landscape that has its foundations in hip-hop, but it’s nothing like the rap you listen to on the radio or at clubs.

If you like what Nacional Records‘ DJ Raff did in his most recent phase, you’ll definitely love this one here and by the way, Raff himself engineered the mix. If you’re a newbie in this genre, I still suggest you download it and give it a listen while driving back home late at night after the clubs, you know, at that time when you’re already sick of all the cheesy post-reggaetón, top-40 hits of Mr. 305, Juan Magan and their clones.