With little fanfare, San Antonio professor, rapper and cultural commentator Marco Cervantes, often known as MexStep, this Friday launched the brand new EP Tráfico, a six-song collaboration with South Texas beatmaker and screwmbia pioneer Svani Quintanilla, or Principe Q.
The EP is the primary multi-song solo launch from MexStep — additionally a part of the celebrated hip-hop group Third Root — since 2021’s Vivir. It additionally marks the primary prolonged collaboration between Cervantes and Quintanilla.
The duo teased this EP final fall with the discharge of the only “The Eagle,” a clear-eyed, sharp-tongued banger of a rumination on the social building of borders and the way out of tune they’re with each nature and humanity.
With a low-swinging beat that manages to conjure pictures of a revolutionary march and a Saturday evening cruise directly, “The Eagle” put followers on discover that Quintanilla’s expertise for crafting ingenious and endlessly satisfying beats is an ideal match for Cervantes’ adroit, socially minded lyricism.
Tráfico’s 5 different songs solely increase on that promise.
One sonic hallmark that dominates the manufacturing on the album is the mix of conventional Latin music types with chopped and screwed hip-hop/entice components. It’s laborious to consider a greater sonic marriage of Houston with the remainder of South Texas.
Nowhere on the EP is that this impact extra pronounced than on standout nearer “Cumbia de la Lucha,” which flips a traditional cumbia sound right into a lurching beat that’s equal components ominous and celebratory. The tune marks the primary time Cervantes, who typically mixes Spanish phrases into his raps, has dropped a monitor utilizing Spanish solely.
Cervantes instructed the Present that his use of Spanish on the tune brings house the message about “the unification of various Latino teams, together with, particularly, Chicanos and Mexicanos.”
“The language and the musical genres will be sturdy factors of unity for communities which can be typically divided,” he mentioned.
Quintanilla additionally famous that the Spanish within the tune parallels the reminder that Mexicans and Chicanos “carry the identical power.”
The EP’s different songs, together with the title monitor, one other standout, discover Cervantes critiquing capitalism’s results on the movement of each info and people, railing in opposition to systemic racism and authorities corruption. On the identical time, importantly, he gives hope that folks’s actions will be constructed to pressure adjustments.
“They love our tradition, however they deport us / Because the starting, smuggling via roads, information, airwaves,” he raps on “Tráfico,” addressing the best way U.S. society exploits members of the Latinx diaspora.
For Cervantes, it’s simply pure to deal with hip-hop as an essential instrument for each self-expression and educating for liberation. He takes inspiration from his personal expertise with having gaps in his schooling crammed by the lyrical content material of hip-hop artists together with Public Enemy and N.W.A.
“These artists confirmed me historical past, particularly Black historical past, in a means that I simply wasn’t uncovered to at school,” he mentioned.
It’s essential, Cervantes added, to by no means lose sight that hip-hop could be a highly effective instrument for educating, for inciting change and for preserving motivation and inspiration excessive.
Quintanilla, who “solely work[s] on music when it’s calling [his] coronary heart,” was fast to reward Cervantes.
“I really feel like MexStep’s music is essential,” Quintanilla mentioned.
Quintanilla mentioned that when working within the studio with the often-reserved Cervantes, he knew he’d discovered an ideal beat when he “may hear his keyboard actually clacking within the background.”
I suppose that’s simply what it’s like writing rap bangers with El Profesor.
Try the album for your self on all streaming platforms as of at this time. Who is aware of … you would possibly even study one thing or get radicalized for revolution — or a minimum of have a rattling good time making an attempt.
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This text seems in Sep 3-17, 2025.
