Beenzino is one of the classiest and most creative artists in the Korean hip hop scene.
This is one of his songs that makes you feel like you're smelling really good and opening the door of your new luxurious apartment, with super white walls, a gleaming floor and minimalist decor.
The jazzy instrumental is chic as f*ck, but you know what’s also great? His confidence. His sense of respecting himself so much that he won’t accept being belittled as an artist. That’s what Beenzino states when he raps: “Don’t ask me who I am, I’m Dali, Van Picasso”.
With a pure and elegant flow that blends well with the sophisticated feeling given by the slight beat along with the instruments, Beenzino compares his job as a rapper to the job of a painter (“Like picking paint, I pick words”). It reminds me of a brazilian poem in which Olavo Bilac describes a poet’s work as the same of a goldsmith’s - but I intend to address it more on another occasion.
Anyway, remember when Kanye West made a speech in which he said he would like to have been to become greater than Picasso? Yeah, Kanye is a megalomaniac guy, but behind his disproportions there’s an interesting substance. “That always sounds so funny to people”, he also said, “comparing yourself to someone who has done so much, and that's a mentality that suppresses humanity”.
We’ll have Kanye on this playlist too, but I wanted to mention those quotes because they resonate with Beenzino’s lyrics for “Dali, Van, Picasso”. Actually, his mood in it pretty much summarizes what this playlist is about: the idea that there is no right or wrong in art (“And you can’t tell me nothing, you know that I’m doing it right”); every form of art matters, be it from a John Doe or from a top class artist like Salvador Dali, Van Gogh or Pablo Picasso; and once you’re comfortable being yourself and doing what you do, you shouldn’t care of what anybody says (“Some may think I’m crazy but I’m not the type to care”).
However, even if you don’t understand a word of what Beenzino says in “Dali, Van, Picasso”, at the end it doesn’t really matter; you just can't go wrong with this vibe.
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About the curator: Ana Clara Ribeiro
Music, art and entertainment have always played a big role in the life of Ana Clara Ribeiro. She grew up in Gurupi (an inland city in Tocantins, the youngest State of Brazil), listening to all kinds of music, reading, writing, watching stuff and connecting them to her personal beliefs and other ideas she read about.
As she became a lawyer and a writer, all the topics to which she is constantly exposed continued to give her insights about life, people and the universe, through the lenses of art.
Nowadays, when she isn’t analyzing lawsuits or producing content about Law, Marketing, Business or Music, she is certainly doing something related to her various personal and professional projects, always to the sound of a playlist as eclectic as her life.
