FEATURE:
Spotlight
PHOTO CREDIT: João Maia
Ludmilla
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AN artist that some people…
PHOTO CREDIT: Ygor Marques
might not have heard of, I wanted to spend some time with Ludmilla. The Brazilian artist is a sensation and role model. She released her latest studio album, Vilã, last year. Married to Brunna Gonçalves, this L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ modern-day icon, in 2020, became the first Afro-Latin American female musician to reach one billion streams on Spotify. I want to start with an interview from last year. Billboard spoke with her last year. The Queen of the Favela, she has this amazing and versatile sound; an enigmatic flow in Portuguese. This Rio de Janeiro native is ready to conquer the globe:
“When Ludmilla stepped onstage to headline Palco Sunset at Rock in Rio in September 2022 — an all-star lineup boasting the likes of Megan Thee Stallion, Guns N’ Roses, and Dua Lipa — the Rainha da Favela boldly announced her arrival. Donning a black lace one-piece and a fur cropped coat, her long black shiny hair looking splendidly, the Rio de Janeiro native oozed confidence, and proceeded to belt out the words to baile funk banger “Favela Chegou” (or Favela has arrived), a single from her 2019 full-length Hello Mundo.
Rock in Rio is one of the world’s largest music festivals, drawing in roughly 700K attendees annually, and the performer had hordes of fans losing their minds over her captivating vocal range and powerful stage presence — and, to keep it real, her twerking dexterity. In March, she will appear in Lollapalooza Brasil, the same month that her next album drops. Her prior studio release, Numanice #2 (2022), garnered the singer her first Latin Grammy for best samba/pagode album.
Ludmila Oliveira da Silva was born to sing. It’s something that comes “from inside my soul,” she tells Billboard Español over Zoom. The artist had just returned home to Rio from a business trip to Argentina. She mentions proudly that she writes most of her songs, and began to do so at an early age. Her inspiration? Seeing The Beyoncé Experience Live (2007) on DVD, a game-changer for the pre adolescent. “I saw her so free on stage, so happy, so confident, and I wanted to do that too,” she recalls. “That’s how I found myself in music.”
For a short stint in her early career, Ludmilla dubbed herself MC Beyoncé, and released her breakout hit “Fala Mal de Mim” (2013) under that stage name — a viral YouTube release that clocked in at 15 million views at the time. While Queen Bey has been her number one idol, she also takes cues from SZA, Kehlani, and Rihanna. “They caused all this, you know?” she muses. “I really wanted to externalize these things that I feel inside me.”
Although Ludmilla’s admiration for American neo-soul, pop and R&B have helped fuel her creative wanderlust, her love for homegrown sounds is unparalleled. She built her artistic persona embracing Brazilian art forms, from samba to pagode and funk carioca, with an enigmatic flow that’s all in Portuguese where she reps life in the favelas, self empowerment anthems, and rendezvous encounters. She’s a household name in her native country, who’s widely recognized as the Rainha da Favela (or Queen of the Favela).
“I come from the favela here in Rio de Janeiro, where funk is a very strong genre. It’s a musical genre that saves lives,” she asserts. “In these communities, you have a lot of connections with funk and Black music.” Favelas have become synonymous with the slums, and although poverty and crime abound, music and culture are potent agents of change (think the roots of hip-hop in the Bronx).
“I started singing and began appearing in the media through funk. I saw that my musical range was wide, that I could do everything I dreamed of, everything I wanted to do. So I started to invest more in this, and now I am at this moment,” she says.
With a highly versatile ability to create riveting pop that spans Latin trap, funk, soul and more, coupled with her alluring stage presence, Ludmilla is poised for her Stateside breakthrough.
Name: Ludmila Oliveira da Silva
Age: 27
Recommended Song: “I would recommend ‘Rainha da Favela’ because it describes who I am as a person, where I come from, and what I’m about. It’s about me, and it encapsulates the image I want to deliver.”
Biggest achievement: “First my fans, and second is that now I have the power to control my own career because people want to hear what I have to say. I now have full artistic control in my own market and a management team that’s helping me on this path. “
What’s Next: The public can expect lots of different things, like private shows, called Lud Sessions, which have become pretty notorious. Lots of collabs with people from Brazil and beyond, and a new album due in March”.
I want to move on to some more recent interviews. I think that Ludmilla is going to be a worldwide name very soon. She is perhaps not as known in the U.K. as the U.S. perhaps. This is going to change as we head through this year. Remezcla talked to Ludmilla about singing in Spanish and performing with Beyoncé:
“After an outstanding year, 2024 feels like the right time for Ludmilla to embrace her dreams of an international career fully. And if she needed a sign, the invitation to perform at the main stage of Coachella came just at the right time. “If I’ve been given such a cool stage to start an international career, I might as well take the chance to do something I’ve always wanted and been asked to do [by fans]: to sing in another language,” she shares.
Though Ludmilla humbly admits she is not fluent in Spanish, she is dedicating herself to studying the language. “I know I will have to take risks and I will make mistakes [while trying to speak in Spanish], but that’s how we learn,” she adds.
But singing in a second language and performing at arguably the most famous festival in the world are minor challenges for someone who has overcome several hardships related to racism and homophobia back home. As a Black woman starting as a funk MC in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in 2012, she had a hard time being taken seriously as an artist. And after she broke that barrier, more hate and prejudice came in 2019 after revealing she was in a relationship with a woman, her now wife Brunna Gonçalves.
Only I know what I go through in my own country, let alone [what can happen] in a different country. But I am brave. Even if I’m scared, I go on anyway.
Though there’s no assurance that Ludmilla won’t face the same prejudices abroad, she’s ready to take on anything. “Only I know what I go through in my own country, let alone [what can happen] in a different country,” she shares. “But I am brave. Even if I’m scared, I go on anyway.”
Despite the sour side of fame, fulfilling her younger self’s dreams gives her strength. In November 2023, Ludmilla was among a select group of Brazilian personalities who met Beyoncé during her surprise appearance in Salvador to promote Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé. It was a meeting that would’ve seemed unthinkable for teenage Ludmilla, who went by MC Beyoncé before her first album release in 2014.
“Beyoncé is my biggest influence in music. To meet her had always seemed [like such a] distant [possibility]. But to know that she knows me and was excited to meet me? I was so surprised,” she exclaims.
Looking back, meeting Beyoncé feels even more special, given the recent release of the Houstonian singer’s latest album, Cowboy Carter. As Brazilian funk conquers more fans across the world, Beyoncé included a sample of DJ Mandrake on “SPAGUETTII.” Merely hours after its release, we ask Ludmilla about this culture clash. “I know Beyoncé is very attentive, does a lot of research, and looks for new music and producers across the world,” she says. “It would be pretentious to think I presented Brazilian funk to her. Perhaps I have shown her different ways of singing and dancing funk, but when I started my career, she was already dancing to funk in Rock in Rio [in 2013].”
While grateful and proud of her origins, Ludmilla’s sound and brand are no longer restricted to funk or any genre or label in Brazil. “I am a singer. If I have a purpose, if I want to do something [in a different genre], I won’t hold back. I consider myself an artist. That’s it,” she says.
Now, it’s time for the rest of the world to know all of her sides. “I’ve dedicated myself so much to ‘Piña Colada,’ and the outcome is amazing. The video is fun, it’s sarcastic, it has a double entendre. And there’s so much more to come. I’m rehearsing for Coachella, and after that, there’ll be an international leg of Numanice, a new pop tour in Brazil, more international songs… I am very excited about this moment of my career,” Ludmilla exclaims”.
I am going to end with a new interview from The Guardian. Some important British press that will bringing Ludmilla’s name to more people here. I hope that she gets booked for a lot of U.K. festivals going forward. If you have not heard her music or know much about Ludmilla, then I would encourage you to seek her out. She is a phenomenal artist who is going to have a very long career:
“Already the most listened-to Black artist in Brazil and a favourite of Beyoncé, Ludmilla has a whole new audience after her viral Coachella show. She discusses the racism and homophobia she’s had to face getting this far
In between her two-weekend debut at Coachella earlier this month, while the first concert was going viral, the Brazilian singer Ludmilla did business meetings, spent a day in Miami and kicked off new music projects. This interview took place on her way back from a short trip to the mountains surrounding the Hollywood sign, a call squeezed into a schedule that will end with a party: “I deserve some fun too,” she says.
She is following the guidebook to pop stardom, with her sights on an international career. Performing a repertoire of Portuguese-language songs, drawing from Brazil’s raw baile funk sound as well as pagode (a modern branch of samba), Ludmilla has already won a Latin Grammy and become the most listened-to Black artist in Brazil, and one of the only women of Afro-Latin heritage anywhere to reach a billion streams on Spotify and do a set on Coachella’s main stage. One of her admirers, Beyoncé, sent over a voice note to introduce it: “From Rio to Coachella, ladies and gentleman, Ludmilla!”
“This is a new, strange scenario to me,” she says. “To me it’s not possible that in a country like Brazil, with so many Black women and more than 500 years of history, I am the first Black woman to sell out a stadium; the first one to reach one billion streams.”
Born in 1995, Ludmilla was raised in Duque de Caxias, one of the most populous suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. Baile funk was filling every corner of Rio by the end of the 90s, and became her bread and butter. In 2012, she released her first single, Fala Mal de Mim, under the moniker MC Beyoncé. She dropped the alias two years later, but never left the Bey-hive – hence the Coachella shoutout.
IN THIS PHOTO: Ludmilla kissing her wife Brunna Gonçalves on stage/PHOTO CREDIT: Steff Lima
“Today, I’m more secure of who I am,” she says, while stressing her beginnings. “I’m a pagodeira, and I love R&B, but I’m also a funkeira. Baile funk comes from our communities, from people like me who started singing because we were trying to have a better life. We weren’t worried about what gringos wanted from us. Black people must take the baile funk movement by the hands.”
Fifty-five per cent of Brazilians are Black or mixed race, but white people occupy many of the prominent positions in music, from performers to executives. “When I first started as a singer, I was a victim of racism and I used to suffer in silence,” she says. “But now I know how important I am and how I can help women like me. After I performed at Coachella, on the first weekend, I saw many Brazilian people crucifying me on social media, just because of racism. This is a struggle I can’t just give up. But it’s annoying – a white singer doesn’t need to speak out about this.”
The day after Ludmilla’s second Coachella performance, Brazilian social media flooded with further controversy: sharp-eyed viewers noted a quick frame projected on Ludmilla’s stage backdrop displaying a street sign that championed Jesus Christ over Tranca-Rua, a key figure of Afro-Brazilian candomblé and umbanda religions. Some people accused her of propagating religious intolerance – violence towards Afro-Brazilian religions has been growing as evangelical Christianity becomes more and more popular – while others argued the picture was just a raw, real glimpse of today’s Brazil.
She defended herself robustly on Twitter and referred to Erika Hilton, a Black and transgender Brazilian MP whose words also introduced Ludmilla’s concert at Coachella: “This is my house and in my house I will not tolerate any kind of hatred.” When I ask her about it, she’s now guarded – “I don’t have a religion, and I believe that prejudice is profoundly sad” – but opens up a little more when discussing Brazilian politics.
Ludmilla has been married to Gonçalves for four years, a wedding that took place in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Despite same-sex unions having been ruled as legal by the Brazilian supreme court in 2011, the country’s lower house MPs drafted a bill in 2023 stating they would be contracts rather than marriages. “It’s not the best scenario, but we have evolved and we can’t step back in this matter,” she says. “Lots of bisexual and lesbian women told me after my Coachella concert that they felt represented”.
A truly awesome and inspirational artist, the amazing Ludmilla is someone that everyone should know. Do add her to your playlist and follow her career. I am fairly new to her, yet I am compelled to follow her closely. It only takes a few seconds of listening to her music before you…
ARE truly hooked.
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Follow Ludmilla
