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Brazilian Funk is escaping the “Latin Music” box just watch what happened with Skrillex and RHR
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Brazilian producer RHR teamed up with Skrillex for a back to back set at Dekmantel in Amsterdam, spotlighting São Paulo club music.
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The performance illustrates how baile funk infiltrates global nightlife while preserving its raw percussion and regional identity.
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The collaboration highlights a new model of music globalization driven by direct scene connections and digital culture.
One of the more revealing Latin music moments of the summer did not happen at a Latin music festival. It happened at Dekmantel; at the Amsterdam electronic music festival on July 31, Brazilian producer RHR played back to back with Skrillex at The Loop, placing a São Paulo artist shaped by baile funk alongside one of electronic music’s most globally recognizable producers. For casual listeners, Skrillex is obviously the headline name. For anyone watching where club music is heading, RHR is the more interesting clue. His appearance demonstrates something Brazilian music has been doing for years: moving into global nightlife not by sanding away its local identity, but by making that identity hit harder.
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First: baile funk is not the same thing as American funk
The terminology can get confusing quickly. Brazilian funk, often called funk carioca or baile funk, developed from the baile scenes of Rio de Janeiro, drawing historically from Miami bass and other electronic and Afro diasporic influences before evolving into a huge ecosystem of its own. Today, “Brazilian funk” can describe a range of related sounds rather than one fixed formula. What connects many of them is rhythm: percussion forward, physical, repetitive music engineered for movement. RHR’s work stretches that vocabulary further. Dekmantel describes him as part of a new wave of Brazilian artists breaking down what it calls the false divide between Brazil’s established club circuits and the “favela born force of baile funk.” His own biography reflects that hybridity. Born in Diadema in the São Paulo metropolitan region, Roniere Santos, RHR, began DJing in 2010 and has explored techno, bass, electro, dancehall and baile funk while keeping Brazilian percussion central to his approach. This is not a producer abandoning Brazil for European techno. It is a producer making Brazilian rhythmic language operate inside multiple club ecosystems.
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Why the Skrillex connection matters
Skrillex has spent much of his post dubstep career treating genre boundaries as suggestions. Pop, bass music, house, hip hop and experimental electronic music have all moved through his catalog and DJ sets. That makes RHR an unusually logical collaborator. Dekmantel had already noted that RHR had been working in the studio with Skrillex before their festival set. Then the pairing moved onto one of electronic music’s most closely watched stages. The symbolism is hard to miss. Years ago, “Latin crossover” often meant an artist from Latin America gaining access to the American or European mainstream by adapting to it. This works differently. Baile funk is not politely asking to enter the room. The room is adapting to baile funk.
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If the beat sounds familiar, TikTok may have introduced you before you knew its name
Part of Brazilian funk’s international advantage is that its rhythms work extraordinarily well in short form video. Fast edits, football clips, dance videos, fashion content, gym videos and meme formats all benefit from music with immediate rhythmic impact. That creates an unusual discovery pattern. Listeners can become familiar with the texture of a Brazilian sound before they know anything about the artist, city or scene behind it. This is where cultural journalism has work to do. Calling every aggressive Brazilian club rhythm “phonk,” for example, can erase distinctions between Brazilian funk, internet born phonk variants and other electronic subgenres that overlap online. The algorithm flattens. Reporting should unflatten.
Brazil does not need outside validation but outside attention is changing
It is also important not to frame baile funk as suddenly important because Skrillex played it. Brazil is one of the world’s largest music markets. IFPI’s 2026 Global Music Report ranked the country among the world’s top recorded music markets, while Latin America as a whole grew 17.1% in 2025 faster than any other region. Brazilian audiences already sustain enormous homegrown stars and genres. The newer development is how often the rest of the world is running into Brazilian music on Brazilian terms. Even Bad Bunny’s relationship with Brazil illustrates how distinct that market can be. Ahead of his first performances there in 2026, AP reported that domestic artists accounted for roughly three quarters of Brazilian music consumption. In other words: Brazil is not a small scene waiting to be discovered. It is an enormous cultural market increasingly leaking outward.
RHR is the story precisely because he does not sound like a crossover strategy
There is no obvious “Latin pop” packaging around this moment. No Spanglish hook engineered for U.S. radio. No attempt to make Brazilian culture aesthetically legible by simplifying it. Instead there is a DJ from greater São Paulo playing hard, percussion heavy club music beside Skrillex in Amsterdam. That is a much more Gen Z model of globalization. Scenes connect directly. A SoundCloud track moves into a DJ set. A DJ set becomes a clip. A clip reaches another continent. A local rhythm becomes part of a producer’s vocabulary thousands of miles from where it started. The danger is that origin disappears in that process. The opportunity is that audiences become curious enough to trace the sound backward. So if Brazilian funk keeps appearing in your edits, parties and DJ sets, don’t just ask what the song is. Ask where the rhythm came from. That story is considerably bigger.
