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SXSW 2018 Recap: Hip Hop, Latin Folk and Mexican Barbecue

The 2018 South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas has come to an end. But before the week-long fest finished, Alt.Latino host Felix Contreras and NPR Music hip-hop correspondent Rodney Carmichael met up at a barbecue joint in Austin to dish about their favorite performances from the week.

Tierra Whack

"This is, like, my new favorite hip-hop artist right now," Carmichael says. "She has this song called 'Mumbo Jumbo' ... that she laid down rough vocals for and she never went back and cleaned them up. It sounds so good, and her energy on stage was so incredible."

La Cuneta Son Machin

"They do a combination of Nicaraguan folk music mixed with jazz, mixed with ska, mixed with a bit of rock," Contreras says. "They blew the roof of this place."

Sudan Archives

"She's up on the stage; this tall, thin, regal-looking black woman with an afro that adds another five feet to her stature," Carmichael says. "It's just a mix of soul and funk and classical thrown in."

Hear the full conversation at the audio link.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Rodney Carmichael is NPR Music's hip-hop staff writer. An Atlanta-bred cultural critic, he helped document the city's rise as rap's reigning capital for a decade while serving on staff as music editor, culture writer and senior writer for the defunct alt-weekly Creative Loafing.
Felix Contreras is co-creator and host of Alt.Latino, NPR's pioneering radio show and podcast celebrating Latin music and culture since 2010.
Christina Cala is a producer for Code Switch. Before that, she was at the TED Radio Hour where she piloted two new episode formats — the curator chat and the long interview. She's also reported on a movement to preserve African American cultural sites in Birmingham and followed youth climate activists in New York City.
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