Jay-Jay (R) and Pac of "Da Weasel"
© AFP/File Miguel Riopa

LISBON (AFP) - One of the biggest, the six-man Da Weasel whose name was inspired by a song by US hip-hop band 3rd Bass, released their latest album "Re-Definicoes", or "Re-definitions", in Brazil, Greece, Spain and Switzerland this month after putting it on sale in France late last year.

The record was Portugal's biggest seller in 2004 even though it was released half-way through the year.

It is still going strong with sales now topping 80,000 -- a figure that might pale by US figures but holds its own in this tiny slip of a country of 10.6 million that juts into the North Atlantic on Spain's west coast.

While Da Weasel was not Portugal's first hip-hop act, they were the first to break through into mainstream radio, said Jose Marino, the assistant director of youth-oriented radio station Antenna 3, and have paved the way for others.

One, Portugal-based Cape Verdean star Boss AC, was asked to open for the US rapper 50 Cent at a concert held in Lisbon last October.

"Thanks to them, the public started to look differently at hip-hop and other close musical styles like soul, rap and rhythm and blues," Marino said.

"We had a rough time getting our music accepted. We were seen as a marginal group," said Jay-Jay, who like his brother and fellow band member Pac, was born in Angola, a former Portuguese colony in southwest Africa.

"The Portuguese public listens mostly to pop and rock on the radio. People had a hard time identifying with our musical style," he said.

Jay- Jay(L) and Pac of "Da Weasel"
© AFP/File Miguel Riopa

But today it's hard to turn on Portuguese television without seeing a music video featuring the six musicians, all in their 30s, in the usual baggy hip hop gear and skin-tight muscle shirts.

Among their fans is Prime Minister Jose Socrates, who invited Da Weasel along on an official visit to Angola earlier this month.

The group, which sings in both English and Portuguese, uses elements from hard rock, pop and reggae to adapt the musical style first developed by inner-city youth in New York's black ghettos in the 1970s.

But critics credit their domestic success in part to going "local". They write about local life in the slang of their youthful fan base to maintain an urban edge without slipping into the hard-bitten aggression and glorification of violence in some US strains that would be out of place in Portugal.

"Our music talks about a very Portuguese reality which has nothing to do with American cliches," the dread-locked Pac, who writes most of the group's lyrics, said in an interview at the local office of their record label EMI.

"Most of the time the inspiration comes from personal experiences. I talk about everything using a street language," he said.

A single from the latest of their seven albums, "Re-Tratamento" or "Re-Treatment", talks about finishing off the national stock of the impotence drug Viagra with a life-long girlfriend.

An earlier song, "Remorsos" or "Remorse", explores a man's guilt at possibly having contracted AIDS after cheating on his girlfriend.

In total, Da Weasel, which also includes Glue, Guilherme, Quaresma and Virgul, has sold more than 200,000 albums here since they formed in 1993 in Almada, a working-class Lisbon suburb and home to a large immigrant community.

Its first target outside Portugal was France, the capital of European hip-hop and home to a large Portuguese community, where it staged a sell-out concert in Paris last November.

Next stop in May is a music festival in Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony in Africa, with managers pitching hard for gigs in Europe later this year.

Up to now, success abroad for Portuguese musicians has been largely limited to those who perform traditional music like mournful fado songs, such as platinum-haired Mariza who has sold half a million albums worldwide.

But other big Portuguese hip-hop acts are following in Da Weasel's success and seeking cross-border audiences, including Boss AC who will release his latest album "Ritmo, Amor e Palavras" or "Rhythm, Love and Words", in Brazil later this year.

The singer is also due to give concerts this year in France and Spain as well as in several former Portuguese African colonies.

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