Imaginary dialogue between PSY and Abra
by Charactorium · Abra (1988 — ?) · Music · Culture · 6 min read
It’s in a recording studio in Quezon City, a humid night in 2015, that PSY meets the young Abra. The fan stirs the hot air, cans litter the console, and a beat loops softly in the background. The two men crossed paths in the whirlwind of platforms: Gangnam Style had exploded Asian pop online three years earlier, and the Korean elder came to understand how this kid from Manila had also broken through via virality. Between two artists who tamed YouTube in their own language, the conversation clicks right away.
—I had Gangnam Style, and you had Gayuma a year later. Tell me how that track slipped out of your hands onto YouTube.
You who lived it before me, PSY, know that it’s not something you decide. Gayuma, in Tagalog, means “love potion”—an old word of ours, loaded with superstition and tenderness. I laid my rap over melodies that smell of Philippine folk music, the kind you hear in jeepneys. I thought I was making just another track. Then the shares piled up, the comments in Tagalog, the covers in cybercafés. Overnight, people who never listened to rap were humming it. It became one of the most streamed songs of my generation here. The craziest part is that it wasn’t English that traveled—it was my language.
The craziest part is that it wasn’t English that traveled—it was my language.
—I kept Korean in my viral chorus. You, why did you insist on rapping in Tagalog instead of English?
Because English was the easy door, PSY, and I refused it. Many rappers here thought you had to sing American to be taken seriously, to reach beyond the Philippines. Me, I grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Metro Manila, and I wasn’t going to sacrifice my identity to please an audience I didn’t even know. Tagalog is the street slang, the jokes, the anger, the love of our people—all of that gets lost in translation. When I talked to Rappler, I said I wanted to represent the youth of the neighborhoods, not betray them. Rapping in my language wasn’t a handicap. It was the assertion that OPM could be proud, raw, and legitimate.
Rapping in my language wasn’t a handicap—it was an assertion.
—Your name snaps like a magic trick. Where does “Abra” come from, and what does it say about your way of writing?
It comes from Abracadabra, the magic word you say before something appears. To me, the rapper is that: a word magician. You take the ordinary language of the street, phrases you hear a hundred times, and you make them extraordinary through placement, rhythm, the punchline. An ordinary word, well placed on the beat, can lift a room. I took the idea all the way with my album Abra Cadabra: each track is a trick where I transform the everyday of Manila into something that shines. People think magic is technique. Really, it’s making the listener believe those words existed only for them.
The rapper is a magician: he makes an ordinary word extraordinary.
—Before the millions of views, there was obscurity. Where did you really learn to hold a mic, kid?
In cybercafés and underground battles, long before anyone talked about algorithms. As teens in the 2000s, we’d crowd around screens to download American mixtapes that circulated under the table. That’s where hip-hop entered my ears. Then we had to go down to the small bars in Metro Manila, face other guys in freestyle, take the punchlines and hit back. There, no editing, no second take: you’re good or you get destroyed in front of everyone. I filled entire notebooks with lyrics before each face-off. That school forgives nothing, but it teaches you flow better than any studio. Everything I am, that demanding scene forged for me.
In a battle, no second take: you’re good, or you get destroyed.
—Your city breathes in your tracks. How does Manila—its streets, its heat—concretely feed what you write?
Manila is my raw material, not a backdrop. During the day, I ride jeepneys in the humid heat, I see street food vendors, tricycles, kids from working-class neighborhoods—and all of it ends up in my lyrics. On Abra Cadabra, I wanted to tell those social realities without sugarcoating them: the hustle, the pride, the exhaustion. We recorded in modest home studios, sometimes small DIY studios near Makati, with whatever we had and many sleepless nights. In the morning, a quick sinangag, and we’re back at it. That life, ordinary for a young person in Manila, nobody was putting it into music with respect. I take it as it is. My city doesn’t need to be made up to go into a song.
Manila is my raw material, not a backdrop.
—Tell me, you who lived it: what does sudden virality change in the life of an artist who didn’t expect it?
It overtakes you, PSY, you know that well. Overnight, people who never heard you know your chorus by heart. The look changes: on the street, at festivals, they expect you, they want the same energy as on screen. The danger is believing the wave will last on its own. Me, I kept writing like before, in my notebook, testing my lyrics aloud at night. Virality opens a door, it doesn’t fill the room behind it. If you don’t have real songs, a real voice, the algorithm forgets you as fast as it found you. I wanted Gayuma to be a beginning, not my only magic trick.
Virality opens a door, it doesn’t fill the room behind it.
—Where I’m from, OPM doesn’t exist, but you talk about it constantly. What is that pride in Philippine music, really?
OPM is Original Pilipino Music—everything we produce here, with our voice, instead of covering foreign hits. For a long time, being a Philippine artist meant imitating, singing in English, aiming elsewhere. Tagalog hip-hop shook that up. I’ve collaborated with many artists from the OPM scene, and together we showed that rap in our language is a full-fledged art, not a byproduct. When a kid from Manila hears his own words, his own slang, in a song that sounds strong, he understands he has a right to exist on the map. That pride isn’t decreed from above. It rises from the street, from the battles, from the modest studios. We stopped waiting for someone’s permission.
We stopped waiting for someone’s permission to exist on the map.
—When you write a punchline that must “make something appear,” how do you go about it, very concretely, alone at night?
It all starts with the notebook and pen. I write by hand, always—the screen distracts me. I jot down bits of phrases heard during the day, a Manila slang word, an image from a jeepney, and I let them marinate. At night, in the studio, headphones on, I test them aloud over the beat, over and over, until the syllables fall exactly where they need to. A punchline isn’t just funny or sharp: it’s the placement, the surprise, the silence just before. I keep it if it makes a friend in the room lift his head. Otherwise I throw it away. It’s a craftsman’s work, not a wave of the wand. The magic trick is prepared for hours to seem spontaneous.
The magic trick is prepared for hours to seem spontaneous.
—Freestyling against an opponent, facing a crowd that judges you live—what did it teach you that the studio couldn’t?
The truth of the moment. In the studio, you can lie: redo a take, correct, polish. In an underground battle, no. The crowd in Metro Manila smells fear, smells hesitation, and if you stumble, it’s over. Freestyling taught me to think at the speed of the beat, to turn the opponent’s insult into a punchline before it even lands. It forges reflexes you keep for writing: you know right away if a line is alive or dead. And above all, it teaches you humility. You can be good, but there will always be a guy, one night, sharper than you. That scene never lets you rest on your reputation. That’s why it’s as demanding as it is authentic.
The crowd smells fear: in a battle, you can’t lie.
—When Gayuma exploded, did your daily life in Manila change, or did you stay that kid from the working-class neighborhoods?
The setting didn’t change much, and that’s intentional. I kept living in modest apartments in Metro Manila, often shared with other musicians, which served as both living space and home studio. We still eat together—adobo, sinigang, local street food—because with us, meals are shared, it’s sacred. Sure, I get recognized more on the street, at festivals. But if I moved away from the jeepneys, the heat, the lifelong friends, I’d lose exactly what feeds my lyrics. The day I write from an air-conditioned tower forgetting where I come from, my songs will ring false. Staying that kid isn’t nostalgia: it’s my working condition.
The day I forget where I come from, my songs will ring false.
Sources
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Abra's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.