Mc Gw Is on 3,000 Songs Already This Year — And He’s Not Slowing Down

The old ways are dying. That was the message Spotify CEO Daniel Ek delivered during a headline-generating 2020 interview with Music Ally. “Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape,” Ek said. “You can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough. The artists that are making it [today] realize that it’s about creating continuous engagement with their fans.”

Perhaps no artist exemplifies this ethos better than the Brazilian rapper Mc Gw. He makes his vocals widely available for sample-happy producers, and as a result, he has already appeared on over 3,700 releases so far this year. That’s more than 10 times as many as any other artist in Spotify’s top 500, according to the analytics company Chartmetric.

Mc Gw’s jaw-droppingly prolific release schedule, the growing popularity of his chanting vocals, and the rapid rise and mutation of the internet sub-genre known as phonk have combined to fuel remarkable growth on Spotify. He now has around 20 million monthly listeners, up from 3.7 million two years ago. He has become the 11th most popular artist in Brazil, according to Chartmetric.

“Before streaming, if you saw that [an artist with a ton of releases], you would think, ‘This super popular guy spends all his time running around different studios in São Paulo and everybody knows him,’” says Glenn McDonald, a former Spotify employee and the author of You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song: How Streaming Changes Music. “The fact that you can now take a shortcut to that by having your samples run around instead of you is pretty effective.” 

“If everybody did it,” McDonald continues, “it wouldn’t be as effective. But the first person who does it can temporarily get very successful that way.”

And that appears to be what’s happening to Mc Gw. He’s now collaborating with Ana Costa, a revered samba artist, and the producer DENNIS, whose “Ta OK” was a hit in Brazil last year. “It’s just scaling from there,” says Jake Houstle, co-owner of the label Black 17 Media, which has distributed a number of songs featuring Mc Gw. “All these opportunities are coming in, and they’re all based on the fact that people use his vocals on everything.”

Mc Gw grew up in Rio de Janeiro, listening first to more traditional musical styles — samba and pagode — before turning to Brazilian funk, also known as baile funk, in 2011. Baile funk is a home-grown descendent of Miami bass, typically characterized by a distinctive up-tempo rhythm and severely streamlined production that focuses the ear on the boisterous rapping. “My main influences are MCs from Rio: MC Didoo, Mc Frank, Mc Tikão, Mc Vuk Vuk, and Mc Smith,” Mc Gw says. (He responded to email questions with help from a translator.)

Mc Gw is an adaptable performer: 2017’s “Ritmo Mexicano,” which has over more than 260 million views on YouTube, nods to commercial reggaetón. And it’s actually a different genre that has played a crucial role in his rise in the last two years. Confusingly, this style is known as phonk, leading to a nomenclature nightmare — while Brazilian funk is different from American funk, and phonk is another thing altogether, all three share the same pronunciation.

Phonk has been around for more than a decade, one of several styles gobbled up by extremely online listeners. When the genre started to reach a wider audience in 2019 and 2020, it was bleak, militant music, with freeze-dried synthesizers and drums so grimy listeners reflexively reached for the Windex. Samples of Memphis hip-hop legends added a human jolt to the unforgiving tracks. 

Most of phonk’s biggest artists — like Kordhell, who has a platinum single in the U.S., and DVRST, whose song “Close Eyes” was synced in a commercial that played during the NBA playoffs — are faceless producers. The music thrives on TikTok pages devoted to weightlifting, careening cars, video game highlights, and anime edits, not on the live circuit. “It’s like a substance: Just keep pouring the phonk over my ears,” McDonald says.

The genre’s commercially popular wing often follows a specific formula, at least for a time. Phonk’s initial streaming hits sampled the likes of DJ Paul, a founding member of the group Three 6 Mafia, and Kingpin Skinny Pimp, a rapper who contributed to Three 6’s debut album and maintained a regional following. Other producers hoping for a phonk hit of their own also lifted vocals from the same sources. 

More recently though, Memphis rap textures are out of vogue, and Brazilian vocals are in favor. This has been a boon for Mc Gw. “Nowadays many phonk producers are using [my voice],” he acknowledges.

Mc Gw makes it easy for them to do so by creating packs of a cappellas that samplers can sift through on YouTube, SoundCloud and elsewhere. (They’re initially free, but producers may pay a price — in the form of a fee, a cut of publishing income, or both — for the sample after release, especially if the song is successful.) “He is essentially the Kingpin Skinny Pimp of this movement,” says Houstle, who estimates that close to a third of the phonk records that borrow Brazilian vocals lean on Mc Gw. 

The rapper enjoyed more name recognition as he was sampled more frequently. And to an extent, this fire fed itself: “As his notoriety grew, he started being placed on more and more songs,” Houstle explains. That helps increase his notoriety further, and the cycle continues. 

Just as TikTok creators use a trending sound in the belief that it will make them more likely to get eyeballs, phonk producers thought an Mc Gw sample would make their song more likely to attract listeners. “If I want to go find new songs that are popping in Brazil, I just scroll through his most recent releases,” Houstle continues.

One snippet of Mc Gw’s vocals found its way to the Argentinian producer S3ZBS, who dropped it into “Montagem – PR Funk” in 2023. This strident, 61-second anxiety attack of a song has nearly 400 million plays on Spotify alone. 

Mc Gw calls “Montagem – PR Funk” a new door that opened for me.” But that doesn’t mean walking through it was easy. 

Online music communities often operate without regard for music industry convention. Producers tend to sample first and ask questions later, obtaining official clearances after a release — rather than beforehand — if they clear them at all. “Montagem – PR Funk” was no different.

Black 17, which owes much of its recent success to embracing phonk, signed “Montagem – PR Funk” once it started to perform well on TikTok. The label almost immediately found itself in dispute with the owners of uncleared samples, according to Houstle. One was Mc Gw. 

Black 17 and Mc Gw’s team negotiated a deal — he was eventually added to “Montagem – PR Funk” as a primary artist — and they now work together regularly. Black 17 previously forged similar business relationships with DJ Paul and Kingpin Skinny Pimp when the phonk community started sampling them.

Mc Gw now employs several staff members whose primary job is to track down uncleared samples of him and negotiate deals with the producers behind the songs. This is a business necessity, the rapper says, since “currently almost 100 songs are released per week with my voice.” 

It’s impossible to catch them all, but if Mc Gw puts agreements in place at least with the songs that are earning noticeable streams, this continues to expand his reach, and ensures that he gets paid for the use of his voice. It’s an odd system, but for now it’s working. 

The rapper doesn’t only want to rely on the favor of sample-based producers; he is also hard at work on his own album, tentatively titled Phonk Nation. “Every day I’m in the studio,” Mc Gw says. “Thank God the phonk appeared — the work is being rewarded.”

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