‘My baby fiu fiu’, the world phenomenon that viralized one of the thousand scandals of Peruvian politics

Peruvian musician and producer Tito Silva.Tito Silva Music (RRSS)

A romantic text about the alleged infidelity of a former president. The melody of a song from two decades ago made popular by Dido and Eminem. And an adaptation that has led the Peruvian musician Alberto Silva Reyes, better known as Tito Silva Music, 30 years old, to touch the roof of the internet. It happened this week, when the streamer Ibai Llanos and the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunnyamong other stars, mentioned and sang his ballad My baby fiu fiu, released on YouTube on May 20. Since then, the song has racked up more than 10 million views and on Monday Spotify ranked it first in the Top 50 viral hits before pulling it for alleged copyright infringement.

The lyrics, Silva explained, borrow phrases from a text published in 2014 by Zully Pinchi, a former candidate for Congress who was involved in a media scandal when the press published screenshots of an alleged conversation, via WhatsApp, with former President Vizcarra. From there comes, in fact, the very title of the song. On the musical basis of the hit Stan, Tefi Céspedes, Tito Silva’s community manager and amateur singer, performs the song and stars in the video, recorded in a room whose walls have photos of the former president. When the video started to go viral In Peru, the first week of June, Céspedes told a television program that based on Pinchi’s words they imagined the story of a girl who is disappointed when she realizes that she cannot be the former president’s lover, because he is married.

The Congress dismissed Vizcarra in November 2020, when he was facing a tax investigation for allegedly receiving bribes during his period as regional governor in 2014. Vizcarra applied for Parliament in 2021 and won a seat, but was disqualified from holding public office and could not take office. The song with which the Peruvian musician has achieved notoriety is one of many that combine his musical ability and his attention to current affairs in a country that has lived in an endless political crisis since March 2018.

In May 2019, when the Peruvian press was focused on a major corruption scandal in the Peruvian justice system due to the leaking of dozens of audios of telephone conversations between magistrates, litigants and politicians, Silva set one of those dialogues to music to the tune of Spider Man. The today dismissed Supreme Judge and fugitive César Hinostroza was referring in that conversation to a meeting with “Mrs. K”, that is, the opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, who was waiting for a cassation from said judge so that they annul a fiscal investigation against him. Spain ordered Hinostroza’s extradition last week, but the lawyer has fled that country, a Peruvian anti-corruption prosecutor reported Tuesday.

The musician says that his followers help him decide which episodes of Peruvian politicians to musicalize, as they tag him on social media every time there are unfortunate phrases or events. “I prefer not to give an opinion: I use irony a lot. My language is through music,” he explained in a recent television interview.

On video, live performance of ‘Mi bebito fiu fiu’.Video: Titus Silva

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This latest hit also comes six years after he recorded the Andean and reggaeton versions of the series’ theme. stranger things or the music of walking Dead in cumbia arrangement. In full quarantine due to covid, Silva performed concerts in streaming from his home with the help of an audiovisual producer who placed him as a DJ on a stage with smoke effects, lighting, clapping hands and even street vendors: all made of pixels.

A life searching for music

Silva has told the Peruvian press that his grandmother instilled in him a love of music when he was a child and then he learned to play some instruments. When he left school, he studied marketing a couple of years but dropped out to study music production at another university. One of his classmates from those years, Pedro Callán, has said that his friend worked in an orchestra to pay for his studies. Silva dedicated almost five years to musicalizing series and composing jingles advertising at a filmmaker in Lima, but lost his job in the first year of the pandemic. He then threw himself into what he started in 2016 and what inspired him the most, creating covers of songs and mashups —join the voices of artists who have never done a duet— and upload them to their networks.

In May 2020, at a very serious moment of the pandemic in Peru, he performed his first concert in streaming and in August, still in quarantine, he did another for the 146th anniversary of a district of Lima. There he presented, among many creations, a remix of the voice of the poet of the Generation of 50, Blanca Varela, with electronic music and, later, a version of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven in chicha, a Peruvian tropical genre.

Two years later, as he has pointed out in several recent interviews, he can live on what he earns from the content he creates. The youtuber Mexican Luisito Comunica and the tiktoker and influencer Kunno have also helped turn Baby fiu fiu trending worldwide this week. The first sang a fragment and commented that he would like to hear the metal version; and the video of Kunno dancing to the theme exceeded 800,000 views. A few hours later, a version in Spanish circulated on digital platforms. heavy metal of the ballad and it is not the first to appear in another genre. In addition, official accounts on platform networks such as HBO and Netflix, that of the MTV channel and Real Madrid’sto mention a few, have taken the opportunity to also join the viral phenomenon.

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‘My baby fiu fiu’, the world phenomenon that viralized one of the thousand scandals of Peruvian politics