People

MV Bill

Rapper, writer, and community organizer from Cidade de Deus in Rio de Janeiro, co-founder with Celso Athayde of the Central Única das Favelas (CUFA), one of Brazil's largest favela-rooted social organizations.

Early life and community

MV Bill — the stage name stands for Mensageiro da Verdade (Messenger of Truth) — grew up in Cidade de Deus, the West Zone neighborhood made internationally familiar through Paulo Lins's novel and Fernando Meirelles's film. He began performing in Brazilian hip-hop circuits in the 1990s and released his first album, Traficando Informação, in 1999.

Work: music

MV Bill's albums include Traficando Informação (1999), Declaração de Guerra (2002), Falcão — O Bagulho é Doido (2006), and subsequent releases. The work addresses life in Cidade de Deus, the politics of policing, racial inequality, and the recruitment of young people into the drug trade. His albums are widely considered among the most important Brazilian hip-hop works alongside Racionais MC's and the broader Brazilian rap canon.

Work: writing and documentary

In 2005 MV Bill published Cabeça de Porco with Luiz Eduardo Soares (sociologist and former national public-security secretary) and Celso Athayde. The book — a collaborative work combining ethnography, polemic, and policy analysis — addressed the recruitment of adolescents into the Rio drug trade and the public-security responses that had emerged across the previous decades. In 2006 MV Bill and Celso Athayde produced the documentary Falcão: Meninos do Tráfico and the accompanying book of the same name, documenting the short lives and violent deaths of young people working at the lowest levels of drug-trafficking organizations across multiple Brazilian cities.

Work: CUFA

The Central Única das Favelas (CUFA), co-founded by MV Bill and Celso Athayde in 1998 in Cidade de Deus, became one of the largest favela-rooted social and cultural organizations in Brazil. CUFA runs programs in dozens of Brazilian cities and operates across cultural production, education, sport (basketball is a CUFA emphasis), and social action. The organization runs the annual Carnaval de Quebrada and operates the Cufa Globo, a youth-development center.

CUFA's partnership with the Instituto Locomotiva has produced the Data Favela survey series, a recurring quantitative documentation of favela demographic and consumer characteristics that has been widely cited in Brazilian business press and policy discussion.

Influence and recognition

MV Bill is one of the most-recognized Brazilian rappers and one of the most visible figures of favela politics in the past three decades. He has received Brazilian and international recognition; his books are widely taught; his music continues to circulate.

Further reading

See Brazilian hip-hop and favelas, Cidade de Deus, and Organizations.