“Last night, I was invited to attend the private screening of ‘Coming Home Peru’. Now for those of you who don’t know, this ‘Coming Home’ series was put together by DJ EFN. The Coming Home series highlights the origin of hip-hop in different countries that you wouldn’t even think have it.
The first Coming Home was filmed in Cuba. I was truly fascinated by the entire hip hop culture there. At the screening of this one, I was able to see one of the female artists featured in the film, perform. Cuban-American Rapper/Singer, Danay Suarez is truly breathtaking. Her stage presence makes you feel everything she is saying as if the song was written for you. Danay, is especially intriguing because of the fact that she rises in a genre that is generally dominated by men and there is so much truth in her music. Coming Home Peru also showed that the ladies definitely play a role in the hip hop scene and featured La Prinz of the group Las Damas who showed her amazing lyrical strength and dropped a verse for the film.
I think in America we’ve gotten so blindsided by what’s being force-fed to us by the media that we don’t notice the REAL music that’s surrounding us; Coming Home Peru really made me realize that.DJ EFN and his entire team did an amazing job with this one. They make you feel like you’re in Peru with them. What really made me even more interested in following this series is the fact that they go into the places where you’re going to hear what’s “real”. EFN explores even the most dangerous neighborhoods to discover the root of their hip-hop culture and I think that is why this series is so appealing.
If you compare it to America’s hip hop scene, it looks like we’ve forgotten completely about the love, honesty, pain, hurt, real life stories and everything else that created the actual genre. In a preview to the Coming Home Haiti film, a man said something to the nature of ‘There is no hip-hop in America, it’s only business’ and in Peru a man mentioned that we forgot about culture. Seeing the different artists in these countries perform and speak in this film makes me agree with them.
Coming Home is way deeper than just hip hop music and/or rap, it highlights the culture that it came from, the struggle going on in many of these places and even different art forms that were birthed by Hip Hop. Break dancing, graffiti, beat boxing, just to name a few. You can truly see that hip-hop has saved so many of the people in these films. It’s their life, their escape—and it’s beautiful. So I would just like to thank DJ EFN, the entire Crazy Hood team, and everyone else that has a part in Coming Home for allowing me to see this and creating this series. I look forward to seeing Coming Home Haiti!
Stay tuned for more from EFN in 2015! You may even hear a little Amber Monique on one of his upcoming projects! ;)”
