ATLANTA, GA – In Puerto Rico there’s a popular move in the game of dominos that rarely gets played, but when it does it allows the player to win everything outright. The term for the move is Capicu.
Rafael Hernandez – a second-generation Puerto Rican-American from Brooklyn, New York – embodies that concept with a hip-hop sound that is so unique that it’s taking the U.S. by storm. As he has pursued a career in music, he chose to embrace the idea fully by taking on the name as his stage name. As he grew in confidence and continued to explore his sound, he found his way to Atlanta, where trap music has thrived and found its mark on a genre that is constantly re-inventing itself. The next evolution, as far as Capi-Cu is concerned, is his take of American trap music with a Puerto Rican vibe to it.
“I’m from America first, so everything I do is in English,” he said. “But I might mix in and flip to some Spanish sometimes. I’m not a Puerto Rican artist living in America. I’m the flip. My swag and style is from American, but I have added my roots into my music.”
His great-grandparents were the first Puerto Ricans to migrate to the States – moving to Brooklyn and the Bronx. Some family members still live in Puerto Rico to this day, but most members of his family are stateside residents. And though that Puerto Rican heritage is a strong presence throughout his family, it took him many years to fully embrace that part of his identity in his music.
His journey from street thug to hip-hop recording artist is one that he’s memorializing in the form of a short-film called “Gwalla.” The title is a term that he uses to refer to the idea of having it all. It’s a code name for money, he said, though it implies more than money in that it nods to the ultimate height of success.
The gist of the plot follows four friends who come from the struggle in Atlanta. They want to make it big, but choose the wrong path by opting to hustle and sell dope. Eventually they realize they aren’t making as much money as they thought they were – only breaking even at the end of the day. It comes to a point where they escalate to robbery, and one of the friends decides to rob a bank.
“It’s based on a true story,” Capi-Cu said. “A good friend of mine is spending 45 years in federal penitentiary because of a robbery like this. Just like the title of the film, we wanted to go for it all with this movie and live a life with the big package.”
Fame, in fact, is a dream that Capi-Cu said he dreams about nearly every day. It’s a lifestyle that he says chose him, and he’s getting closer and closer to realizing it as each day passes. In fact, his most recent single “Gramz on Gramz” has been getting a ton of attention through Atlanta and the South. It’s a song that he recorded with Baby D – an Atlanta legend. It combines hip-hop trap music with reggaton and lyrics that lift up the hustle and grind that it takes to realize success.
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