Michael Brun Joins Forces with Fuego, Ms. Nina and LASTMONDAY on New Clubbing Hit “Ocho“
As music has flowed from Africa, across the Caribbean into Latin America, so too has the Haitian born Brun, collaborating with artists from across the musical spectrum, a list that runs from Nigerian Mr Eazi to Columbia’s J Balvin, Benin’s Shirazee to Jersey Club queen Uniiqu3.
Brun’s mission as a Haitian artist has been to define his homeland, not by tragedy or despair, but by the richness of its culture, the pride and resilience of its people and the beauty of its music. In the wake of another devastating earthquake in Haiti this mission takes on renewed urgency.
On Ocho, the collaborations with LASTMONDAY and Fuego, who attended school in the DR, were particularly important for Brun, to celebrate what unites, rather than divides, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Sammy Sosa and Ocho are a nod to those Haitian club roots, but undertaken with a global lens, a follow up to Brun’s Melanin EP last year, using the richness of experiences and interactions Brun has enjoyed in the last decade producing and DJing around the world. This revisionist approach was something Brun saw in all his collaborators; LASTMONDAY’s reggaeton flips of old school hip-hop, Fuego’s pioneering trapchata discography and re-imagining of Caribbean classics like Gyptian’s ‘Hold Yuh’ and Ms Nina’s neoperreo take on Latin club music.
Brun says: “Sammy Sosa and Ocho are tracks made to dance too, to bring people together. People need this, even in moments of darkness and tragedy. My activism in Haiti is always ongoing, but as an artist I also want to push Haitian culture forward at a global level, and this release does this through the universal language of club culture.”
