C. Tangana


Antón Álvarez Alfaro, better known as C. Tangana, is a Spanish rapper from Madrid, Spain. He is a member of the rap group Agorazein together with Sticky M.A., Jerv.Agz., Fabianni and I-Ace. He began his musical career in 2006, under the pseudonym of "Crema", with a demo called ElesCrema.

Early life and career

Antón Álvarez first gained recognition as the online phenomenon "Crema" in 2006, when his demos began to spread among young people.
He studied at a Catholic charter school until he finished baccalaureate and then he studied Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. At that time, his name was already popular among the youth who were attracted to urban rap. Not until he presented his demo Agorazein in May 2008 did he manage to make a place for himself in the young people's music players; at a time when Spanish rap music featured artists such as Nach, Violadores del Verso, El Chojin and SFDK.
After that, in spite of having little success in the underground music scene, he did not present any more demos. Only some songs were released in collaboration with other musicians and singers from the independent movement. He reappeared in 2011 with a group of friends under the name Agorazein. That year he released a work entitled C. Tangana that had new sounds, which brought him as many bad reviews as praise and new followers.
C. Tangana had replaced his particular style of short and direct phrases with short, seemingly disconnected, Anglicized phrases; and the old bases gave way to a sound universe that enhanced the most creative part of the music. Antón always declared that his music had no other pretension than to make people enjoy themselves and said that he fled from being classified as a professional musician. While playing with music, he made a living working in a Pans and Company and in a Vodafone call center, but his love for music never ceased. When he released a new work in 2012, he decided to live in isolation from the media since January 2013 in order to face a fame with which he did not feel comfortable. He revealed himself to the Internet world on Twitter in February of that year; he was as short and direct as he is in his music and he generated great expectation with each of his movements apparently thought in advance.
He gave his first concerts in Latin America in 2006 as C. Tangana. He had already performed there with his group Agorazein, and he gained some recognition. He left his job in 2015 to dedicate himself completely to music.
In 2017 he started a tour in Latin America called C. Tangana Latino Tour. When the tour finished, he announced his official agreement with the record company Sony Music. He released his song "Mala Mujer" with this company, and he became famous in Spain. This song ranked the top positions on Spotify viral playlists not only in Spain, but also in different European countries and Latin America. In this way, "Mala Mujer" became a summer hit in 2017 and was certified platinum, which was the first certification of C. Tangana's career. The song continues to be played in Spanish discos and main radio stations.
C. Tangana featured alongside Lauren Jauregui on Tainy's single "Nada", released on February 21, 2020.

Style

With Agorazein, he attracted the attention of people thanks to a blend of bases with good rhythms and melodies that transmitted teenage rebelliousness and sadness. In contrast with rap, C.Tangana's soft sounds became as important as the voice, that started to gain acoustic treatment. He also broke all the moulds with his appearance, dressing unabashedly with branded clothing and surrounding himself with people of upper-middle class. This fact clashed with the prejudices and the morals of hip-hop in Spain. In that time, the vast majority of the groups still had the working class pride and it was associated to the slums and the sporty clothes. Nevertheless, multinationals, success and money were already part of the rap world.
In 2015, he adopted a more traditional lyric style, but he also continued with the most creative part of his music. In 2015, he had a conflict with Los Chikos del Maíz, who included in a video clip a parody of C.Tangana's style. The conflict lasted until 2016 sharing answer songs, known as "beefs" in rap's slang. When C.Tangana published his video clip from "Alligators", he made allusion to the brand Lacoste, and Los Chikos del Maíz parodied him in the video clip of their song "Tú al Gulag y yo a California". As a response, C.Tangana released the song "Nada", where he wanted to tell his own experience as something called in the underground rap world as "praw lesson"; in other words, not to insult or to argue in a trivial way. When the conflict was over, he declared to Seven Star Radio that the group get benefit from the revolutionary image of the left-wing, that it's a group with ideas that don't offer anything new, and that its music is advertisement of a small segment of the population. In 2016, Los Chikos del Maíz dedicated to him "Los Pollos Hermanos", and Tangana answered in a few hours with "Los Chikos de Madriz".
In his songs, C.Tangana transmits individualistic ideals. On occasion, some mass media have interpreted sexist sentences in his songs. Regarding to his political ideas, he said that he doesn't believe in the representative democracy.

Influences

The singer discovered rap music thanks to Beastie Boys album III Communication and the feature film Fear of a Black Hat, as it is mentioned in his song "Diez Años". Among all the influences, he also underlined If You're Reading This It's Too Late by Drake, and other singers like Pharrell Williams and Kanye West, because of their ability and inclination to innovate and to attract public's attention. However, he has confessed several times to listening all musical genres because, as he said, everything has an interesting side. C. Tangana's music is not the result of particular singers, but the product of musical movements and trends; although he recently said in an interview that his idol was the "King of Pop" Michael Jackson.

Feuds

C. Tangana has been involved in several beefs with other artists during his career.
The most well-known one was the beef with the rap group Los Chikos del Maíz. In May 2014, C. Tangana recorded the video clip of his song "Alligators" where he blatantly advertised Lacoste. In September of that year, Los Chikos del Maíz released their song "Tú al Gulag y yo a California" making fun of Tangana because of the advertising above mentioned. The group gave a concert in Madrid on May 17, 2015 where Tangana supposedly attacked Nega. C. Tangana confirmed the fact later that year with his song "Nada" throughout which he explains how the fight was. Later, he confessed that he regretted the punch in a radio interview for the program Yu Vodafone . In May 2016, Los Chikos del Maíz released their new song "Los Pollos Hermanos" where they sent many replies and attacks to Tangana, for example: "Say now that my fame is because of Pablo Iglesias, I already fucked you on my demos" or "I charge an entry fee, what a madness! It's logical, you studied in a catholic school". Four hours later, it was released "Los Chicos de Madriz" answering back to the group. Many other people saw themselves involved in that conflict, for example Pablo Iglesias, Spanish leftist politician, who supported Nega.
In 2017, Tangana's new album was released and the singer himself started a beef against Kaydy Cain with his song "No te Pegas" and the quote "You were going to end up with all, you said it over and over again, you all said the same like motormouths". Kaydy Cain replied with his song "Perdedores del Barrio" and the quote "To whom are you an idol? How much did you pay and how did you do it?", referring to Tangana's album Ídolo.

Discography

Albums

Charting albums
as Crema
as C. Tangana
Featuring Agorazein
Featuring Red Bull artist encounters
'''Other songs

Solo

as Crema
as C. Tangana