On European Hip-Hop And Jennifer Garner

Malo Hulles

Today I’ve been thinking a lot about the movie “Sex and Lucia” (or “Lucia y El Sexo” for the purists among you). I love this movie. I love it not only for the fact that it has not one but two women to die for[1] in it – Paz Vega (Lucia) and Elena Anaya (Belen) – but also because it’s a damn fine movie in its own right. It is obviously a work of love for the director, Julio Medem. I completely agree with one of the blurbs from the web site,

"Blissful...seething with eroticism and gorgeous visions...."
--Michale Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

If you're going to seethe with something, I suppose eroticism is as good a thing as any. Don’t worry, however. This ain’t no movie review (or disco, for that matter). The specific part of the movie I’ve been thinking about today is the scene where Lucia does a strip-tease for her lover, lip-synching to a Spanish hip-hop song. Some time ago I looked up the song (“Yo marco el minuto”) and the artist (Mala Rodríguez) because I liked it so much. I finally found the MP3 and I’ve been playing it over and over as I’ve been writing. I’m not exactly an expert on Spanish hip-hop (or any kind of hip-hop) but I decided to find more stuff that she has done….

You guessed it. I’ve fallen madly in love with Mala Rodríguez as well. What’s not to love? It’s a bit frightening, however, because it seems that after a couple more blog entries I’ll be able to make a (short) list of women I’m not madly in love with. If you’re curious, the list will be headed by Jennifer Garner, mostly because she doesn’t seem to be the kind of person that would like me.

And from Germany comes…

Another musical entity from Europe that I’ve been recalling fondly lately is the group “Tic Tac Toe”. I don’t think they ever released anything on American shores, but when I was in Switzerland they were all over Euro MTV. My pal had their self-titled CD, and I ended up buying a couple copies of it myself.


It’s infectious German hip-hop (I guess that’s what you’d call it). The best tracks on the album are “Haste Was Biste Was”, “Ich Find' Dich Scheisse” (“I Think You’re Shit”, which would probably raise an eyebrow or two here), and a cover of “Funky”. I even own a CD single of them doing about 15 versions of “Funky”; I have no idea why I own it. At any rate, if you listen to the “Tic Tac Toe” CD once, you’ll find yourself singing these songs to yourself day in and day out and gradually learning German at the same time. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Guten nacht, mis amigos.

- Hulles

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[1] Najwa Nimri is also in the cast, and certainly a beautiful woman, just not to my taste. Ms. Vega and Ms. Anaya, however, both get 5 Hulles Steamy-Hot Stars. Hey, it’s my blog.