5000 euros (well, as much as a bill can sound). That’s the amount that Yung Beef handed out in Callao to promote his new album, as if it were the opening of season 3 of ‘The Paper House‘. A countdown, a logo, his songs playing in the background and a few people receiving legal tender. But who is Yung Beef and why can he afford to give away money as if they were trinkets? We tell you.
Who is Yung Beef?
Born in 1990 in Granada, it is possible that nobody calls him “Fernando Gálvez” anymore: for the last ten years he has been better known as Yung Beef. A drug dealer who has had a complex life: he started selling drugs at the age of fourteen and soon after he already had a point of sale with his group, the Kefta Boys. But before becoming a mafia boss, he knew how to stop. He worked in Marseille, Paris and London, where he learned all about urban hip-hop and how to mix it with reggaeton, rock, breakbeat or even flamenco.
Where could I hear you?
Although he began his career alongside the crimino-music group Kefta Boys, he soon made the move to two of the most influential in the urban scene of the past decade: PXXR GVNG, which changed its name to Los Santos after Sony appropriated the name, and La Mafia del Amor. Since disbanding in 2017, Yung Beef has released six albums and ten EPs. In fact, in 2023 he plans to release three more albums in an unstoppable music career. The first, this one, ‘Gangster Paradise’.
Why should I listen to you?
Yung Beef is not your run-of-the-mill rapscallion. He doesn’t just talk about street stuff or brag about the money he has, he has a more nihilistic approach, questioning whether Yung Beef really is Fernando or is a character he has created for himself, doubting about art, music and modernity itself. That’s why a performance like the one in Callao is more than coherent with himself. After all, what are 5000 euros for someone who has everything?
Yung Beef’s new release is 6 tracks where he turns the routine of the rag-picker who is out of the system and who has finally found happiness. A mature work of someone who seems to have been born wise, but that time has shaped him that way.
