Peripherical voices: expansion, immersion and dialogue in the Racionais MC’s work

Abstract

This paper presents a reflection on the work of the rap group from São Paulo Racionais MC’s, highlighting points of dialogue between his last two studio albums: Sobrevivendo no inferno, 1997, and Nada como um dia após o outro, 2002. We found, in this discursive course, the presence of voices which intertwine and indicate a collectivized speech, seeking the identification between the slums and the group’s rhetoric, but they also point out to an immersion into the subjectivity, to the problematization of the discourse itself, acting as a form of debugging of the social experience in the favela. We argue further that Sobrevivendo no inferno represents a turning point in
the thinking of the quartet. Thus, themes and perspectives present, although embryonically, in the first focused album, point to dramas that take shape in the second one.