Funk travels the world on Brazilian voices that foreign producers sometimes can't name

From Dubai, Artem Shargin hears a Brazilian MC's voice and sees a product. His label, 0to8, run with fellow Russian Kirill Smetkov, cuts those voices into records that last 15 seconds. The BPM is pulled down so each one sits neatly under a short video. According to Billboard Brasil, the catalogue has now soundtracked more than 130 million videos. Online, the sound already has a name: Brazilian phonk.

Abroad, the tag covers fast, distorted funk, the Brazilian bass-driven genre. It draws on scenes like funk automotivo, built to blast from car sound systems, and the montagens of São Paulo, tracks stitched together from chopped vocal samples. None of that is new. What changed is the scale and the single name, coined by TikTok creators and labels like 0to8 itself, as Billboard Brasil reports.

That engine has owners. Producers abroad sometimes have no idea which MC they are sampling, and the voice travels as texture, cut loose from the person who made it. Billboard Brasil reports that 0to8 profits from those vocals and has started dealing with the MCs directly.

Funk has become raw material for global labels as well as a Brazilian genre. Brazilian phonk may be the name the world types into a search bar, but the sound still begins with the MC and the producer back home.