July 2019. Someone tells me that the most famous ragpicker in Argentina is going to perform in the Riviera (Madrid). It’s a beautiful day and I feel like going out, so I stroll over to find a couple of hundred hyper-excited young people drinking or lining up outside the room. As the hour approaches, we head for the ‘Press/guests’ door and while our names are being checked there is a huge ruckus. We look behind us and Young Beef appears -the top star of Spanish trap- surrounded by his badass entourage, asking for passage amidst laughter and bravado. The ragpicker from Granada has come to lend a hand in the final explosion of the concert, where he sings together with Duki one of his most famous hymns: “I drink champagne and throw it away”whose pounding rhythm remains stuck in our heads for several days.
The recital is a party, despite the fact that the Riviera has not even come close to half capacity. Four years later, this weekend, things have completely changed: Duki will spit out his verses of euphoria and frustration before two Wizink pavilions (Friday 24 and Saturday 25) with almost all the tickets sold (plus thirty-five thousand seats).. For any other 26-year-old artist this would be one of the heights of his career, but for Mauro Ezequiel Lombardo Quiroga it’s just another day at the office, not a particularly glorious one. To give you an idea, last autumn he filled the Vélez-Sarsfield stadium four times, nothing less than 180,000 viewers. Duki right now is the biggest artist in Argentina (and one of the biggest in the Spanish-speaking sphere as well). The latest release of him is “If I had time to spare”, where he forgets paranoia and gives free rein to his romanticism. It already has four million listeners on YouTube.
boundless duki
How did this success story start? In a very modest way, always outside the industry, by choice. He forged his skills in street rooster battles, especially those of The Fifth Step, which skyrocketed its popularity. They were held in the Rivadavia Park in the Caballito neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires. Later he grew little by little, cultivating his challenging and bizarre personality.. She was already aiming for a national star with her first album, super young blood (2019), released on his own record label and which reached platinum status. His career gradually grew and now he collaborates with Bad Bunny, is a friend of Ibai Llanos and close to Bizarrap.
Bizarrap invited him to participate in the anthem of Argentina’s victory in the World Cup in Qatar
At his La Riviera concert, a six-year-old boy who had attended with his parents drew attention. He knew the lyrics by heart and he danced like a man possessed. That is one of Duki’s secrets: how much she has hooked the child and preteen audience. This wrote the magazine rolling stones Argentina in a summer 2018 cover story: “The average age inside the theater (the great Rex of Buenos Aires) must be 14 years. There are entire rows of seats occupied by children, with a parent designated from time to time.. After more than 100 recitals in bowling alleys -small rooms-, today is one of the few opportunities that minors have to see a Duki show, and they are taking advantage of it”. Her popularity exploded in that period, to the point of completely overwhelming him: “A lot of money went black in a very short time and I had to put it in the freezer,” Duki admitted. “Suddenly, a kid who didn’t even exist made a couple of million,” she recalled.
His last bell? Last December, when the albiceleste won the World Cup in Qatar, she participated in the anthem “Three stars” with her friend Bizarrap, where each and every one of the players of Lionel Scaloni’s team is named. It had two million views in the first ten hours. “I have all three stars in the set; people shout ‘world champions’; when Messi touches it, football speaks; the team and the people are together”, says the letter. Of course, his status as a generational icon is already assured, whatever he does from now on. To see him live is to attend the history of urban music in progress.
Duki performs today and tomorrow at the Wizink in Madrid and on March 3 and 4 at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona.
