Featured: Niña Dioz - "Chicos, Tenis y Cachucha"

Featured: Niña Dioz - "Chicos, Tenis y Cachucha"

El Mixtape II, Mexico

In our last Niña Dioz feature she claimed that techno was back (“El techno esta de vuelta”), she was right, most of our ‘destacados’ are in fact, techno-disco driven albums. This time, she takes on a much more personal track, a letter to her loyal fans and the new ones. She looked stunningly gorgeous in the video “Chicos, Tenis y Cachucha”, it’s weird to say, but it’s that kind of individual pride that keeps us on the edge of our seats in anticipation of La Nueva Escuela (her anticipated debut LP). In the meantime, she is putting the final touches on El Mixtape II, which now has an official release date, November 26.

Niña Dioz had a Q&A with MTV Iggy, where she confesses she feels closer to the ‘Latin Alternative’ scene than to Mexican hip hop. It’s refreshing to see an MC who embraces the hip-hop culture but is not a purist. She is rather on the lookout of what’s truly around her. “Chicos, Tenis y Cachucha” is a must-download, the perfect blend of The Knife’s “Hearbeats” and Niña Dioz’s ‘latin lingo.’ Seems like the kind of track that gets much love over at The Hype Machine, we'll see if their new system of recognizing accents & 'ñs' works on this very hot jam.

♫♫♫ "Chicos, Tenis y Cachucha"

MySpace

Video: Niña Dioz - “Chicos, Tenis y Cachucha”

Niña Dioz’s debut full-length album La Nueva Escuela is still packed somewhere, but we can wait as long as she keeps delivering great tracks like “Frepo Minimal Man!” and her newest track “Chicos, Tenis y Cachucha.” This song is to be included in Niña’s upcoming El Mixtape II, which features collaborations from Plastilina Mosh and Bomba Estereo’s Liliana Saumet. We don’t know about you, but it’s smelling like a hit, it could very well give Maluca’s China Food a run for its money as this year’s must-have mixtape. We love the informality of this song, it’s copy-and-paste done right. The lyrics keep The Knife’s “Hearbeats” edge, on that “mind is a razorblade” premise that it’s in itself, like those great egocentric epic hip hop anthems.

MP3: Niña Dioz feat. Kid Kimera - "Frepo Minimal, Man!"

A few days ago we were telling you about the upcoming second mixtape by Niña Dioz, here is the impressive upfront track that got us excited in the first place. “Frepo Minimal, Man!” is her best song since “Faquir,” an upbeat, sweaty and weekend-ready tune that’s been haunting our iPods these last couple of days. The kind of song that makes grilling fun, not to mention the calories it burns from your system, just by listening to it. The song is graciously mounted on “Groove 34,” one of the pieces included in Crooker’s Free Beat Pack. This track is a collaboration with 17-year-old rapper Kid Kimera, who’s virtually unknown but we’re keeping an eye on him from now on. “Quieres mas pero que daras? move that ass o te quedaras.”

♫♫♫ "Frepo Minimal, Man!"

MySpace

Niña Dioz Preps New Mixtape, Features Collaborations From Plastilina Mosh & Bomba Estereo's Liliana Saumet

Monterrey’s Niña Dioz was last night’s guest at Indie103.1’s Sala de Espera, where she premiered a couple of tracks from her upcoming second mixtape. This soon to be released mixtape includes a collaboration with one of the Plastilina Mosh’s guys (can’t remember which one), as well as a mouthwatering collaboration with Bomba Estereo’s Liliana Saumet. Her label has kept us waiting for way too long for the release her much-anticipated debut LP La Nueva Escuela, but that’s not stopping her from creating new exciting music, which only keeps getting better as she is starting to fully command her medium. As our very own Jean-Stephane Beriot commented, “she’s got the square/precision factor we love in rappers, it shouldn’t be all about speed.” This mixtape will also include one of her best songs, “Frepo Minimal, Man!,”a hot-as-fire tune featuring a very promising 17-year-old kid named Kid Kimera. Also, you don’t want to miss her collaboration with Ceci Bastida, currently offered as a freeload at The Fader.

Feature: Niña Dioz - "El techno esta de vuelta"

“El techno esta de vuelta y no te diste cuenta.” The wait has been overly long, after her successful Marcapasos EP, Niña Dioz signed to a big label and has struggled to release her much awaited sophomore album La Nueva Escuela, but she’s keeping momentum one way or another. Along the wait, she’s collaborated with Plastilina Mosh, d3NdRON and Pambo, performed at Vive Latino, crafted one the best songs in the Rudo y Cursi Soundtrack (“Prefiero el Asfalto), rocked the LAMC and most importantly, she made the oh-so-good “Faquir.”

She’s determined to keep the action going releasing Niña Dioz El Mixtape, out next month and which will be available for download on December 3. The first single from this release is a new and unreleased track titled “El techno esta de vuelta”, and it features Marcela Viejo, one of the two amazingly talented girls from Quiero Club. It’s definitely more upbeat (perhaps because she’s been hanging out with los Mood Fu), but it definitely shows a more sober and ultimately better skilled MC who knows her resources in and out.

♫♫♫ "El techno esta de vuelta"(feat Marcela Viejo)
MySpace

We Come In Piece, d3NdRON

WE COME IN PIECE, d3NdRON
Happy-Fi, Mexico
Rating: 74
By Carlos Reyes

Hailing out of the Happy-Fi wing comes this relatively known band, d3NdRON’s electronic rock is making a lot of noise lately. Some of our friends have listed We Come in Piece as one of the year’s albums, too many and too abroad to ignore. On the surface and on initial listen, d3NdRON is not that all interesting, I mean, despite having an album that’s ultimately big of a party with collaborations from Niña Dioz, Pato Machete, Alejandro Rosso (Plastilina Mosh), not to mention Chajoe from Niña is the lead vocalist here and Pris from Quiero Club one of the band’s members. But among other surprises, d3NdRON reveals itself as the possible evolution of Northern Mexican rock electronics.

Although we don’t find them as revealing as the hype they’ve generated, they’re pretty comfortable and in control of their field. It’s like they got the tools, the ideas, and the ability to make their particular sound actually happen, but once fragmented (in songs) the transaction looses force, creating amazing musical passages but not necessarily amazing songs. This feeling omits “Mitras Anthem” because that’s one great piece, for its tricks and up-to-heaven configuration, plus getting the anthem sensitivity correct. It’s a homage to Mitras (a place in Monterrey) and the album dances around this idea, “somos la noche, el tiempo, el cielo, c’mon!” A truly wonderful gigantic song that almost makes the rest of the songs look bad.

I care very little about the subliminal junkie pieces (“Step Up”, “He Drove A White Rabbit” or “I’ll See You at the Gate”), they’re just too dreamy to function although I wouldn’t mind holding some of the stuff in them with me. In the other hand, I can hardly resist the aesthetics in something like “El Orden del Universo”, they go from dreamers to creators delivering the high edges. Like The XX, they deliver great beats and even great lyrics but it’s hard to keep up with them, there’s barely any order in them. In “AB Comando” (feat. Niña Dioz) they bounce into hip hop and ends up as one of the album’s peaks, plus that “let’s hear it for the dogs on the West Side … wof wof wof” liner is fantastic. There’s some polishing and rearranging to be done, but overall, this is quite impressive, they really pay justice to their “Carne Asada ‘til the morning light” premise.

♫♫♫ "The First Warning" (feat. Pato Machete)
buy it @amazon
MySpace

"Faquir", Niña Dioz (Final Version)

“Faquir” by Niña Dioz is seriously the best song she has ever recorded, I explained why on this previous post, but here is the master final version of the track, which I had posted here before but I’m posting it again since I made an error including an unfinished version of it on our Fonogramaticos Vol.4 compilation. That’s what you get for having demos and rough-drafts standing around the good stuff. I will be uploading the compilation again with the correct version of the song, but here it is on its own so you don’t have to download the whole thing again.

♫♫♫ Faquir

New Single: "Faquir", Niña Dioz

New single by enfant-terrible Niña Dioz, “Faquir” is her confrontation with Mexico’s crude and enchanting capital. People say ‘el defectuoso’ changes souls but she is forcing her way convinced of who she is and wants to let the city know she won’t change a bit, a provincial thought that had not been fully envisioned outside the ‘regional mexican’ genre. Her Marcapasos EP left many of us enchanted, and after collaborating with Plastilina Mosh, Mood Fu and bringing one of the best tracks in the Rudo y Cursi Soundtrack, we can pretty much declare her album as one of the year’s most anticipated releases.

"Faquir"

Marcapasos, Niña Dioz

MARCAPASOS, NIÑA DIOZ
Independiente, México ***1/2
Rating: 72
by Carlos Reyes

Mexico has always offered the urban genre a very limited space, very few albums actually make it to indie radios and we can finger count the amount that actually get in the shelves. Control Machete was by far the most important foundation of the urban we hear today. Toy Selectah (Toy Hernandez) is nowadays one of our best producers and supporters of underground; from hip hop, alternative, pop and sonidero. Niña Dioz seems to be one of her protegees and should have no problem dueling La Mala Rodriguez, Anita Tijoux or Vanexxa. Marcapasos is her debut EP, a very confident embodiment of rhymes, reminiscent of the progressive rap we all love and a lot tougher than her female MC collages. In the U.S. we have the great music evangelists from Pitchfork controlling independent music, indie acts in Mexico better impress the radio station Reactor 105.7, Niña Dioz’s “Cuando Cuando” became one of the surprising hits of the year. A bit too influenced by American Rap? Perhaps, but that doesn’t make her music any less honest. “Desde mi productor” has some great lyrics and eos a fine job filling the time gap between the time the sung was recorded and the moment it reaches its listener. We expect big things on a future production, seems that she is really getting the attention she deserves especially among her collages. Whether she is getting respect by fellow urban artists is at this moment unknown, but she has impacted several alternative bands around including Plastilina Mosh who features her on their latest All U Need is Mosh's "Danny Trejo". No doubt, the best Mexican MC right now.

Niña Dioz MySpace
♫♫♫ "Cuando Cuando" (Esnips Stream)