Escaping From the Artificial



The last son of two South American militants who had to flee from their country to escape imprisonment, torture and death. Grew up among Latinos and Arabs and learned how to respect and get influenced by other cultures. Came across Hip-hop in the late 80's when his friends bigger brother introduced him to artists like Ice T and NWA. Since he didn't know how to speak English back then, Ernesto couldn't understand the lyrics that he was hearing, but the anger and energy these rappers delivered penetrated every language barrier. Even though he practically grew up with Hip-hop, he didn't start rapping until 1997 when a couple of kids in school asked him to join them jamming after school. After writing some rhymes and performing at some local shows, Hip-hop became a part of his soul. By then Ernesto had started to get interested in politics, and he thought that Hip-hop was a perfect way to deliver some thoughts. He took the name Menteroja (mente roja means red mind in Spanish) after getting kicked out of parties for talking politics. In 2002 he released the demo CD The Day and in the summer of that same year he worked at a warehouse to get money for pressing his 12 Rebellion Exercise/Indoor Metaphor. A year after that, the 7'th single Still Breathing/Ho Chi Minh style was released along with a music video for the latter track. This record was followed up by the debut album Escaping from the artificial and the music video for What is to be done? in 2005. After getting awarded the Ingmar Spingo Nilsson grant in 2006 he started working on his new record - the EP named Street Art & Street Science which about to be dropped in association with Boiling Pandas in 2007. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.