Chonis

Bad Gyal’s from Vilassar de Mar outside Barcelona, born in ’97, and when she shows up on a track with La Zowi and Miss Nina it’s clear they’ve figured something out. I’m where the money is, she sings, I just want to cash out, I want bills, I want - fuck me. La Zowi goes further: I’m a whore counting money, your whore knows how to suck it, I’ll cut you because you’re bad. These girls call themselves Chonis - street girls, trashy girls, the thing you’re not supposed to become - and they made trap and reggaeton that got played in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville.

What gets to me about it is how completely unserious they are about performance. No feminist statements, no attempt to make wanting things and being crude about sex add up to something coherent. They just want money and sex and the freedom to say so. Coming from Germany where gender discourse is sterile and binary - enlightened or bad, nothing between - this sounds like someone finally remembered how to breathe. There’s something in that refusal to apologize, to wrap it up nicely, to make it mean something bigger than appetite.