El Jincho, the story of a marginal star: he became a thief at 13, was jailed for kidnapping and today his songs are viral on YouTube

To be kinki (or “quinqui”), in Spain, is to be a little marginal, the origin of the term refers to the traveling hardware store, a trinket merchant who goes from here to there to earn a living as he does. can. El Jincho he defines himself as humble, real and a little crazy, he also knows himself kinki. He’s a rapper, he was a thief, he has an excellent student background and immediately dropped out of school. His fame penetrated the walls of the working-class neighborhood of Orcasitas and this Latin accent from Madrid cut TikTok with his song “The joints do “, whose official music video exceeds four and a half million views on YouTube. And keep adding.

In the vein of Intoxicados’ “Una vela”, El Jincho crosses drugs, the police, urban walks and a sympathy for looting that convinces even the most moralistic in his hit. Like him Pity Alvarez (currently jailed for murder), the man from Madrid has the backing of the slums, the mark of prison on his skin, in his walk, in his own words. Thus, his music is infected by this harsh reality which both frightens and seduces.

“I’m not proud of everything that’s happened to me, I’m proud of what I am now, that my mom is watching, but no pride in crime, theft, none of that”, he confessed to presenter David Broncano, in the living room of the Spanish program Resistance. On the TV set, he said they could call him Jose, but didn’t specify exactly what his real name was. He just joked, was sincere and danced a bit, just the way people like him.

He was no more than 14 when he started to excel in cockfighting, those freestyle competitions in which the one with the longest tongue wins. Today, he is 30 years old and although he does not brag about his spicy past, he uses those experiences to give a framework of credibility to his words. Jincho knows what he is talking about and although he is European by birth, he identifies with the Latin style, with an air of the Dominican Republic, a country he visited – he recorded a video there – and where he was. hit on a bachata base. Orcasitas, even though it is in Europe, has a landscape closer to that of any third world neighborhood: there are no sewers, there is little light, the asphalt is not the same as that of the Gran Vía. The rapper knows what it is like to live in crisis, he knows the effort of working since childhood to help his family and the mistake of having fallen into crime in search of easy money.

Interviewed by the newspaper El Mundo, El Jincho recalled his first robbery, which took place a little before the freestyle: “It was in a bakery under my house when I was about 13 years old. We take the box, about 6,000 or 7,000 pesetas. Real. I was a thief. But now I’m already a rapper, an artist. I no longer know the crime. When they teach me a new device to commit crimes, I don’t know anymore. Now I know the microphones “. In this same note, he admitted having won “More theft of money than with music” and he did not hesitate to admit the reason he had been imprisoned. “It was three years and 10 months. For illegal detention. Come on, for a kidnapping. We had one person illegally detained. We didn’t want to let him go, we stole him … But the polygoms (the police) threw us away. I left in 2015 ”.

Since living from music, the Madrilenian no longer steals, but his contempt for the police remains latent. “I have been arrested several times. Many. And, maybe, that’s why. I know what their treatment looks like and what they look like. Some rats. Some pigs. The aggressors Real. And make it clear that the offender is me, not my mother or my sister. So why, when they came to visit me in prison, were they also disrespectful? They wanted to search me, search them … as if they were going to do some illegal activity. They did not speak to me with respect. All police officers are the same to me, just as they treat all criminals the same, ”he explained clearly.

Her intimate life has something of a mystery. In an interview in 2018, he said that He left Orcasitas because he now has a daughter and wants her to grow up in a different environment, away from crime and drugs. It is not known who the mother of this girl is, which she does not show on social media either. His communication with the public is honest and messy, he doesn’t hide anything, but it doesn’t look like there’s a plan behind it either. On Instagram, for example, her profile picture is of a young woman and her bio barely says #RIPMiNegraYocasta.

On YouTube channel Buho TV, from the Dominican Republic, the rapper said Yocasta was his girlfriend and died in his arms because the ambulance never arrived. In her own words, she was asthmatic like him, but she was much more delicate and after a first hospitalization, she died. “Her mother didn’t want her with me because I’m a criminal. I took her to a city and she said “I’m bad”, but I saw her well. (…) She had a respiratory arrest and I was with her. Since then, I have his picture in my profile, his name, his face and everything “He said excitedly showing the tattoos in memory of his dead beloved.

His sad story is not what emerges from El Jincho, but his misdeeds and his pace. Or maybe it’s the combination of one thing and the other that makes it different. In his case, the honors he has won in the streets help him to live well and continue to teach. This is not a metaphor: El Jincho was summoned to give a postgraduate master class in music business management at the University of Valencia. The title of the meeting will be “Artist Development and Monetization on Digital Platforms” and will serve as an example of success in a struggling music industry. Who Said All Is Lost? The Jincho, no.

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