“Zitazoe is the worst of me, the perfect symphony of head and heart. Zitazoe is the worst of myself on a paper. Zitazoe is me, my writing, my everyday life, my friends, my eyes, feet, hands, my nose, my tits, my fringe, my hard work. Zitazoe is that.”

For Zitazoe rap is “the formula, my passion and my crisis” (You tell me). Rap is her journey through life, a way of struggeling with herself, of growing and learning. She chose rap as a “profession” and as her “life line” (Daría mi pela). Her songs and lyrics rise from particular experiences, and much of it is the living in a hostile world. About the process of creating songs and albums she states: I live, I feel, I write and I record. Zitazoe raps about self-assertion against injustice, but also about self-destruction and constantly about the relief to be found in alcohol.

Zitazoe is present in the Chilean hip hop underground and on the world wide web stage since 2010, tirelessly uploading videos and albums. Her audiovisual work ranges from freestyle shootings at home to well edited video clips. Much of it is produced together with the Dead Jonkies crew, formed by Marea, Piwi, Loko Way and her. Between 2011 and 2014 she released five solo albums and one collective EP with Eskape, Stefancan and Biorek, named Soul Violent.

Zitazoe’s style is puristic and hard, with much focus on her rhymes. She performs a devotion to the old school, states it without any doubts and from the very beginning, as well as her belonging to the south of Santiago de Chile. To her being an old schooler means to love “the competition, I do it without any purpose“ (Mala Dama). And the old school represents the viewpoint from which she manifests scepticism about the current hip hop boom in Latinamerica: too much fashion and too little realness.

Interviewers almost always ask her to position herself as a female rapper. Zitazoe refuses the notion of hip hop as a masculine culture and the idea of a female counter culture. “I am not very feminist. Rap isn’t masculine, it’s rap, as it always was, we don´t have to create a feminine rap.” To the contrary she reclaims a masculine style, a male-associated roughness, stating “I don´t sully the name and I do it like a man, rough and indifferent” (Mi demencia). That this is not to be understood as a rejection of solidarity among women and girls shows her participation in the Femme Rap Fest Chile in 2014. Since pushing that event she positions herself in favor of organized female visibility in hiphop culture in order to resist the stereotypes of women lacking rap skills. She does not refuse to be a role model, but prefers not to be that as a woman but as an individual old school and competitive rap artist.

written by bruja21