14ymedio, Havana, 2 July 2021 — The rapper and music producer Malcoms Junco Duffay, ’Malcom Justicia’, died this Thursday in Havana due to cardiac arrest, according to journalist Michel Hernández on his Facebook profile. A pioneer of rap in Cuba, Junco died, Hernández explains, after “facing difficult situations in his family environment.”
The journalist notes in his post that the musician developed one of the “most outstanding careers within the hip hop and underground movement” on the Island, he was the producer of the “iconic album” Sentimientos desafinados [Out-of-tune Feelings] and recorded one of the first Cuban phonograms that included rap themes.
“He also investigated the evolution of rap in Cuba and published volumes that contributed significantly to shedding light on a cultural scene that has remained practically anonymous,” says Hernández, who concludes: “Today, Cuban rappers have united in grief for the loss of one of their brothers in the cause, an artist who gave himself to rap and assumed its philosophy as a way of life.”
Junco Duffay studied music at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory and devoted himself to the study and production of Cuban music. For his book CONTAR EL RAP: Antología de Rap y Hip Hop cubanos, written together with the musicologist Grisel Hernández, he received the Special Prize for Musicological Research and the Cubadisco Prize, both in 2019, in the hip hop category.
The Cuban Institute of Music and the Cuban Rap Agency mourned the death of the rapper in their networks and offered their condolences to his family and friends.
“Today is a very sad day. Malcoms Junco Duffay is gone, one of the most cheerful and meaningful people I have ever met. Good trip brother. Cuban hip hop will continue to raise its voice, too, to remember you,” producer Claudia Expósito wrote on her Facebook profile after hearing the news.
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