Duki
One night in 2012, on the paved but empty streets of Puerto Madero, a teenage Mauro Ezequiel Lombardo fell in with a knot of kids trading freestyle rhymes and joined in. "Yo quería rapear como esos negros que veía en YouTube, pero no lograba darle musicalidad a las rimas," he said. "Por eso empecé a competir. Las batallas, para mí, eran una forma de entrenamiento." As Duki he rose through the Buenos Aires battle league El Quinto Escalón, won its 2016 tournament, then quit competing to write songs, breaking through with "No vendo trap" that November. He co-founded the trio Modo Diablo with Ysy A and Neo Pistéa, and within a few years was selling out Gran Rex, Luna Park, and eventually stadiums across Argentina and Spain — the artist most credited with turning trap into Argentina's mainstream sound.
When Charly García swiped at Auto-Tune while accepting a lifetime-achievement trophy at Argentina's Gardel Awards in 2018, Duki's sister forwarded him the story the next morning. His reaction, printed days later in Rolling Stone Argentina, was pure devotion: "Lo amo. Lo fui a ver a Vélez en 2009, ese día que no paró de llover, y la rompió... Ahora estoy por sacar un tema en el que digo: 'Demoliendo hoteles como Charly.' Lo respeto y lo quiero tanto que ni le respondí." Weeks later "Ferrari" arrived with the line intact, grafting the title of García's own 1984 rockstar-excess anthem straight into Duki's boast.
listen forCue up García's 1984 "Demoliendo Hoteles" — a driving piano-rock strut about trashing a hotel room out of pure rockstar excess — then Duki's "Ferrari." The genres barely touch, but the boast does: Duki drops García's own song title into his verse, transplanting one specific act of rock-star vandalism into a trap flex about wealth and status. It is the clearest lyrical debt in his catalog, a title lifted whole rather than a mood borrowed.
During his freestyle years, Duki modeled himself so closely on A$AP Ferg that his 2018 Rolling Stone Argentina profile calls Ferg his mirror, down to the gestures Duki copied onstage. The debt traces to one song. "I learned about trap in 2013/14, with a song by A$AP Mob, 'Hella Hoes,'" he told Billboard Argentina. "After the song ended I was like 'What have I just seen?' I was just starting to rap, and I was shocked. That song is the future." It reset what he thought rap could sound like.
listen forPlay "Hella Hoes" next to "Rockstar" for the shared triplet stagger — syllables landing in clipped clusters of three instead of straight bars — and the brand-name swagger both tracks trade in. Duki's profile describes him mimicking Ferg's stage tics down to a cheek-hook gesture; on record, what actually carried over is the vocal grain: Duki lets his voice crack and distort rather than staying clean, the effect his hometown press credits "Rockstar" with him finally mastering.