Trust the MARIACHI

WARNING! If you’ve been sleeping under a rock over the past few months and still haven’t heard of or jumped on the Luna Florentino wave, we forgive you… it’s not too late considering how dope his latest offering “FLORENTINO MARIACHI” is. It’s not every day we get an undiscovered and unknown hip-hop artist release a song that sounds so effortlessly good. Like, remember how crazy it was hearing Nasty C’s “Juice Back” for the first time? There was nothing like it, you could literally hear that this was a first of many hits to come! That is what I felt when listening to Luna, his simple flows and clever wordplay speak of a bright future for the young rapper.

His latest single, “Florentino Mariachi” taken off his mixtape which is also titled “Florentino Mariachi” is currently available on all streaming services including TurnUp Music and JOOX South Africa so you don’t have to take my word for it, stream the jam right now and get a sense of his sound before I drop my 2 cents worth, I’ll wait… Okay… now that we got that out of the way, it’s time to break down the good and the bad behind this hit single. I’ll start with the good, the hook! I absolutely enjoyed what Luna did with this song’s hook. His ability to absorb his name into the catchy hook results in you remembering not only the song but more importantly his name, quite smart considering that he is still an emerging artist. This simply means that if you are pulled by the song, you should automatically know who the artist is.

What I loved about the song is the simple flows and clever wordplay. More often than not, we find up and coming artists trying to prove themselves on songs and often overcompensating because they are so desperate to win over ears of the masses. Luna instead decides to have fun with the single, less about showing you what a lyric beast he is and more about having fun on the song, this makes for an easy listen. What I didn’t like about the song was the lack of marketing or advertising behind it. Considering what a good song it is, I believe more can and should be done to get it out there. The people need to hear the song before they can love it. A lyric video posted on YouTube of the song was sitting on less than 200 views the last time I checked, sad considering what power the internet gives unknown artists.

The second quality I did not like around the single was his choice not to feature someone. I think the single is strong enough to feature almost any rapper in the industry and I believe Luna should have considered this. A feature with a strong or well-known rapper would have offered him a greater pull and more interest from different ears. A feature would have also offered him a different dimension to the song and this could have potentially made the song even better. You consider all 3 of Tshego’s last singles, “Garden”, “Hennessy” and “So High,” all-powerful singles with clever features that resulted in Tshego being considered more than an unknown artist.  This is just something I believe would broaden the reach Luna has.

There it is, my 2 cents on the latest offering by Luna Florentino, FLORENTINO MARIACHI! Go ahead and spread the word, the more we show love to our artists is the better and bigger they become! Let’s keep the S.A. Hip Hop culture alive!

Listen to the track on JOOX now >> bit.ly/JOOXflorentinomariachi

Get the Vodacom RBT: Dial *117*987*272# or go to Vlive! bit.ly/VodacomFlorentinoMariachi