What quote best describes your philosophy on life? “If it sounds good and feels good, then it is good!” (Duke Ellington) What’s new in your world? Performing and taking the Black Diamond live concept to the world. We just finished the Australian DJ/MC tour and it was amazing—we even had the chance to swim with dolphins. We’re doing a lot of remixes (officials and non-officials). We just put out the new video for “Aqui Para Voces,” the track that features the baile funk goddess Deize Tigrona. We are also about to hit Japan for the first time for a DJ/MC tour to support the album and then to the US (look for us at Coachella) with the full band plus a couple of DJ gigs. What’s behind the name? In 2005 we did a massive weekend party in two of the main cities of Portugal. We took over Lux in Lisbon and Casa da Musica in Porto with all the artists on our label, Enchufada. At that time we already had some kuduro re-edits and those tunes caused a huge surprise in everybody. So we started to name some suburbs around Lisbon in order for people to make a connection of where that music was coming from. I think Lil John was emceeing at that moment and he said, “This is the sound from Buraca”—one of the 11 areas of Lisbon’s borough Amadora, which is the fourth most populated city in Portugal, where Lil John and Riot grew up. Buraca is known for the high number of African immigrants living in that area. Next day all the party reviews mentioned the fact that we brought the music of the suburbs to the biggest stages in Portugal. After that we decided to pick up one of those city names and we ended up taking Buraka because it sounded the coolest and from those 11 areas of Amadora it’s the one with the worst reputation. Something you should probably know about us: We do care about bridging the gap and the articulation of cultural knowledge in urban societies and having fun during the process. And about the music we make: Take it as an Afro punk dance thing. How did the collaboration with M.I.A. come about? One day at the studio/office the phone rang and it was M.I.A! She wanted to hook up and do something…travel to Angola and work with the local producers and include the stuff on her album Kala. Because our busy agendas we ending up metting in London, locked ourselves in the studio and let the magic happen. She came with ideas for the hook really quick and dropped some verses but we were not that confident, so we decided to do some more work on it in Lisbon. Couple of weeks later Kala was out, so we decided to keep the song, transform it in some kind of a kuduro introduction and have M.I.A delivering this new sound to the world. Talk to me about kuduro vs. balie funk vs. kwaito, in relation to each other. Same social context—it’s all music developed in the slums of very rich countries, where the idea of ghetto is way beyond our comprehension of what a ghetto is. It’s not meant to save anyone and to buy a way out of reality. It’s meant to be consumed inside those frontiers but like everything in life, it’s impossible to control and soon it spread to other layers of the society. Kuduro has a very strong dance element attached to it, and is bringing a whole new vocabulary, similar but deeper than the verlan used by Parisian youth. Beside all the obvious music differences I think kuduro goes beyond music, it became a movement in Angola and soon we will see it as a lifestyle.