One Track Mind

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Since the genre’s seminal days, hip-hop has always been a boy’s club. Popular female emcees have been few and far between–from MC Lyte to Kid Sister, you’d probably be hard-pressed to name more than a dozen or so. That’s one reason why, as a female rapper with prodigious talents, Anita Tijoux is such a breath of fresh air. Another is the playfully cross-cultural atmosphere she imbues in her music, likely the result of her own cross-pollination (she was born in Lille, France to a French mother and an exiled Chilean father before returning to South America as an adolescent). In 1997, Tijoux was a co-founding member of Makiza, a hip-hop troupe modeled on the New York underground sound of acts like Leaders of the New School and Native Tongues which quickly rose to prominence in the Latin American hip-hop scene.

Since then, Makiza has released three LPs and in September of 2007, Tijoux made her solo debut with Kaos, an import-only title here in North America. Her Stateside debut is the upcoming 1977, to be released in April on Nacional Records. The record’s title track is a cool mix of modern production techniques and samples of traditional Latin instrumentation, with blaring trumpets and percussive acoustic guitars. Of course, the star of “1977″ is Tijoux herself. Her lyrics roll off her tongue in a maddening swirl, enthusiastically bounding up the spiral staircase created by stuttering samples and their syncopated groove. Lyrically, the song recounts Tijoux’s birth in the year of the snake (“el año de la serpiente”) and the awkwardness of adolescence (a “bizarre phase”–”una etapa bizarra”–in her words).

Regardless of whether you can follow her words along or not, “1977″ is an infectious, distinctive composition which still feels fresh and satisfying after dozens of listens.

Here’s where you can find Anita Tijoux at this year’s SXSW festival:

- Thursday, March 18th at midnight @ Flamingo Cantina
- Saturday, March 20th at 1:00 am @ Maggie Mae’s