A book on C. Tangana can be devoured in an afternoon for several reasons. The first is that he’s one of those people who, in addition to being successful, seems to know things that the rest of us don’t (hence why every living creature in the industry … want to stay with him, even if some also with him), and an analytical immersion in its pop cosmogony promises results about this.
The second reason is that until the arrival of ‘C. Tangana, from raw rap to the red carpet’ (ed. Kultrum Books) there was no book on the artist with a thousand names. A curious fact, given his status as King Midas who turns everything with his image into gold, but understandable since he is an extremely multifaceted and even contradictorily irritating character.
This was not a problem, but rather an incentive, for journalists Joan S. Luna and José de Montfortauthors of an entertaining and comprehensive review of the life and work of Antón Álvarez that includes the opinions of five other cultural critics to cover every possible angle of a rapper who became a true strategist of transcendence.
He himself is tired of being considered a marketing master.
Beyond overenthusiastic hyperbole (“He’s a pop god”, “Joaquín Sabina didn’t transform Spain, Tangana did”), the fourteen chapters refine the plan to explain how their protagonist achieved his exploits, offering a detailed review of his albums, explaining who collaborates on what, where this or that sample comes from, analyzing his stylistic evolution and, here is the most interesting part, studying in depth his business tactics.
On the tightrope
To escape the encirclement of rap, the first thing he did was to magnetize indie because he knew it was a scene devoid of meaning, transformed into a confusing and disoriented antechamber of the mainstreampotential niche for intruders. From there, his strategy was to pretend he was the “fucking master” before he actually was.
With this strategy, if you brake too much, you become the laughing stock of the industry. And there he stayed on this tightrope for a while, until in the end he slipped it on all of us. It was a double-edged sword because he himself was tired of everyone considering him a marketing master, and that’s when he did two projects that were supposed to be a failure, ‘El Madrileño’ and his tourby cultural and not economic conviction.
It remains to be seen whether Antón really transformed C. Tangana into a ninot by making this decision, and what his next step will be.
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