London-based genre-bending duo Ooberfuse is back with a new collaboration that won't whisper when it can roar. Their latest single, "Better Than Gold," produced alongside the incendiary and unyielding Manila rap crew Tugista, is more a street-level op-ed against institutionalized graft than a song. The release joins east and west in a transcontinental explosion of fury, rhythm, and resistance.
Fronted by the Filipina Cherrie Anderson, Ooberfuse have been making a point of confusing cultural boundaries for a long time now. But here their signature fusion turns urgent. Songs like that are definitely by the wayside, says Anderson. Actual music is the grab for power by the throat. Through Tugista, working with Tugista, hearing their truth, this is not an abstract political debate. This is the sound of depravity expanding in everyday life. Beside her, producer Hal St John turns fury into frequencies. Production was not the translation of language, it was transcending rage. That fire has a language that everyone understands. It was my job to steel that fury with a sword to forge a beat that screams an unarguable truth, all abuse of power is a crime against the people.
The verses that Tugista spits come at you like a reckoning. ZJAA finishes the track with the searing line, "I don't sugar coat, I know the bitter taste of truth," while YC shoots off a challenge, "My rap verses are nothing more than complaints and reminders. We all should do something to turn on the light."
In an age marked by billion-peso corruption scandals, "Better Than Gold" is the sound of rage turned into art. It is music honed as a weapon, requiring accountability, and putting people on notice that a nation's true wealth lies not in its corrupted leaders, but in the hearts of its disillusioned.