Ez Mil and ‘Panalo (Trap Cariñosa)’: why the rapper’s controversial Pinoy pride anthem has gone viral

The Philippines-born, Las-Vegas based rapper plays fast and loose with historical fact and deep-seated social issues on his viral singleBy Stan Sy– 9th February 2021

Ez Mil dropped ‘Panalo (Trap Cariñosa)’ in July 2020, as part of his album ‘Act 1’, to relatively little fanfare. But the Philippines-born, Las Vegas-based rapper took Filipino social media by storm last week after he performed the track live on the Wish USA Bus in a video that has racked up nearly 30million views since.

The Philippines by and large still considers hip-hop a niche genre, so it’s not surprising that it took this long for people to have heard ‘Panalo’. But as soon as Filipino social media did, they couldn’t stop talking about the 22-year-old rapper’s braggadocious, chest-thumping Pinoy pride anthem – for reasons both good and bad.

Why have fans embraced ‘Panalo’? For one, it’s come at a bleak time when Filipinos need a win, and the song – whose title translates to both “victory” and “winner” – provides just that. It also boasts an earworm of a hook: it samples the Cariñosa, the tune for a traditional Filipino folk dance most Pinoys only hear of in Social Studies class. To hear it in a contemporary hip-hop song in 2021? Jarring. To have it sound good? Practically astonishing. And on the Wish USA Bus, Ez Mil spat his verses with the fire and speed of Eminem – one of his inspirations, whom he shouts out on the track – while seamlessly switching between three (!) languages: English, Tagalog and Ilocano.