Golden haired, petite and Colombian-born Shakira is one of the biggest selling female vocalists on the planet, maybe you've heard of her. She can move her body in ways you may not be able to, and has bullied Latin American governments into feeding, educating and caring for young and poor people. So what does she want with Dominican New York princess Venus X? Help with research for the weird dance record she's making. Download Venus' new Hard Destiny mixtape, a magic 25-minute report on what Hot 97 jams, Southern fight raps, German club rants and Puerto Rican pop sounds like when they're stewed together. It's a preview of the idea-garden Shakira may harvest in the studio and launch onto your radio. Below, Venus tells us how she linked with the mega-star and what they're up to.
Download: Venus X's Hard Destiny Mixtape
Venus X: Shakira always writes and produces her own music. There’s a guy who does A&R at Columbia who’s been watching Ghe20 G0Th1k and they were like, We saw this opening and it might work. [Shakira] wants to make dance music. She’s always been ahead of the curve. With “Ojos Asi,” she was doing Arabic instrumentals with Spanish vocals. I’m putting together a weekly newsletter for her, with music and videos. I’m sending her a lot of hyrbrid-oriented stuff—Turkish reggaaton, a lot of kuduro that sounds like African trance. Hopefully I'll be able to introduce her to things that are working on the dance floor so she can translate and re-interpret them for universal pop. There’s all this stuff that happens in nightclubs, so far removed from what’s on the radio. There are so many producers working at the intersection between music that they love and music that’s really popular in their communities. We’re all tapping into the electronic subconscious, trying to rethink what music means right now. The result is a total mash-up of all these genres in a totally smart way cause it’s not like somebody thought about it, somebody lived it.
I haven’t met Shakira yet—she’s on tour in Mexico. She’s coming into the studio at the end of August and we’ll start working together then, honing in on the music I gave her and deciding what she wants to use. But her whole staff is women. I’ve met just one strong woman after another. It’s really intense, strong women manning these big ships. On Facebook, I’ve been trying to connect to girls because I think there aren’t enough girl DJs in the program for my party. I want to start a party that’s all girl DJs, three or four in one night. Even if the genres they play don’t fit together that well. I think that’s something we’ve done well with Ghe20 Goth1k—bringing a lot of crazy shit together and making it work. It’s just not really clear who’s doing music, everything is so fragmented. The network isn’t exposed, especially for girls.
Hard Destiny Mixtape tracklist:
Tribal Anarchy, Ghe20 G0th1k live edit
Destination Calabria (sexy hardstyle), DJ Darkmatt
La Leche, Cobra
No Hands (club), Unknown
Ella Quiere Cualto, Joswa in Da House
Crank Dat (hardstyle), DJ Diox
Tu Ere Mi Punky, Unknown
Que Le Den, DJ Pumpe, DJ Viper, DJ Chamako
Mi Cama Huele a Ti, Tito El Bambino
Beautiful people (club) - dj k millz
Motivation bubblin - venus x live edit
