Baile Funk
The 7 Best Baile Funk
Tracks of All Time
Rio's favela dance parties from the late eighties, built on two Miami bass breaks looped almost without variation, with shouted Portuguese over the top and a police relationship that has never been anything but hostile.
- Origin
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1989
- Tempo
- 125–135 BPM
- Also known as
- funk carioca, funk brasileiro, proibidão, montagem
- Tracks
- 7
- Updated
- 2026-08-31
Listen to the whole list
Play it through here →One record after another, with the verdicts
Take 5 of 7 to YouTube → (opens in a new tab)
Opens the list on YouTube as a playlist you can save to your own account. We never see your account, and nothing is stored here. 2 of these records have no verified YouTube link yet, so they are left out rather than guessed at.
Number 1: Cidinho e Doca / Rap da Felicidade
1995
"I only want to be happy, to walk freely in the favela where I was born." The genre's most quoted line, over the most basic possible beat.
Also on Miami
Number 2: Bob Rum / Rap do Silva
1995
A narrative about a boy killed by the police, and one of the first funk records to reach national radio. It was banned from some stations for exactly that.
Also on Dancing to Bad News
Number 3: DJ Marlboro / Melô do Tabaco
1989
Marlboro is the producer who turned the bailes into a recorded genre, and this is close to the beginning. Everything is the drum machine and the shouting.
Also on Miami
Number 4: Tati Quebra Barraco / Sou Feia Mas Tô na Moda
2004
"I'm ugly but I'm in fashion." The funk carioca of the 2000s was full of women being ruder than the men, and Tati was the sharpest of them.
Number 5: MC Bola / Bota o Cabelo pra Trás
2009
Montagem style — the beat cut into stutters and hard edits. Rio producers pushed the loop into something increasingly abstract while keeping it completely functional.
Number 6: MC João / Baile de Favela
2015
São Paulo's version, and a hundred million views. Funk stopped being a Rio secret and became the dominant popular music of the country.
Also on Miami
Number 7: MC Serginho / Um Tapinha Não Dói
2001
An enormous, disreputable hit that got funk onto television and into an argument about its lyrics that has never really ended.