TUNE OF THE WEEK: BZRP MUSIC SESSIONS, VOL. 61 (Luck Ra, bizarrap)
(dale play records, 2024)
Just in time for the 2025 New Year celebrations, super-producer Bizarrap has dropped a new BZRP Music Session. The track features fellow Argentine artist Luck Ra.
The series, now in its 61st edition, invites artists mainly from the world of Latin music into Bizarrap’s studio to make a record. Bizarrap has previously teamed up with Shakira, Nicky Jam, and Nathy Peluso for some killer tunes.
As always with the Bizarrap sessions, the music video is full of Easter eggs.
Around the halfway mark, Luck Ra holds up his phone and shows a phone number for a brief second. My call to the number (based in Argentina) yields no response. The Whatsapp profile picture, meanwhile, shows the number 66 and the status is set to averigua bien (you’ll find out). Are we skipping to session 66 next? Will it be 66 days from now? Or as one commenter online suggested, by multiplying 0.66 by 365 and subtracting the resulting 240.9 days from the end of the year we get the night of August 27th, 2025.
Searching averigua.bien on Instagram brings up an account with three photos posted in the last few days. The second photo has the caption: 62.63.64.65.42.66.0.50º. The coordinates lead to a random point in the Norwegian Sea, leading most commenters to conclude this is a list of upcoming sessions. Session 50, for example, could this be Duki part two?
Internet sleuths have also speculated the next session could be with rapper Cazzu after she posted the same cryptic message, “averigua bien”, in an interaction with Bizarrap back in 2021.
Anyway. Back to the song.
Luck Ra had one of the defining albums of 2024 QUE NOS FALTE TODO (EVEN IF WE HAVE NOTHING ELSE), and his success has sparked the revival of cuarteto music. Cuarteto was born in Córdoba (Luck Ra’s birthplace) in the 1940s stemming from the mix of folk music played by Spanish and Italian immigrants. The upbeat dance rhythm is similar to Dominican merengue, and lyrics are usually about life’s simple pleasures, being in love, partying with friends, etc. The genre peaked in the 1970s with artists such as La Mona Jiménez.
Bizarrap lends his electronic touch to the new release and Luck Ra’s signature cuarteto sound is full of dramatic flourishes of trumpets and accordion. The feel-good melody is guaranteed to get everyone moving on the dance floor. Luck Ra sings about acting tough (duro) but deep down missing the one he loves (te extraño muchísimo) and looking for her everywhere.
It’s summer in South America right now, but for those of us in the northern hemisphere, we have plenty of time to learn the lyrics before the summer. So by the time the sun reaches our side of the globe, you’ll be able to sing along:
“NO ME HAGO EL DURO, NO, ME HAGO EL DURÍSISMO, PERO EN EL FONDO TE EXTRAÑO MUCHÍSIMOoOoO.”
Tune.
