Brazilian rapper MC Soffia is on a mission to empower Black women

When Brazilian rapper MC Soffia performed at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, she was 12 — and already five years into her hip-hop career. 

Now, at 20, MC Soffia  — born Soffia Gomes da Rocha Gregório Correia — has just completed her first US tour, and she is about to release a new album.

The title track, “Sofisticada,” or “Sophisticated,” is about a beautiful Black woman who has done well for herself and likes nice things — and is “dissing” a man. 

The song is about empowering Black women in a country where their unemployment rate is double that of white men — a theme that comes up a lot in her work. 

“When I started singing, it was not that I decided that I was going to talk about empowering women. The subject was just natural for me,” she said. 

MC Soffia herself is powered by the Black women in her family: Her mom, Kamilah Pimentel, 39, is her manager, while her grandmother, Lucia Makena, 63, does her public relations.

Both her mother and grandmother have college degrees, and she said that they taught her to be proud of her race and gender. 

Her mom, a single mom who raised her for years from a housing project on the outskirts of São Paulo, has worked hard to help her achieve success, bringing her to hip-hop workshops when she was 6.

Her mom has managed her career ever since and is even getting a law degree right now to learn more about legal matters and copyright issues. Her father, Yan Curumin Gregório Correa, and her mother never got married, but he’s involved in MC Soffia’s life.

MC Soffia and her mom still live together, and they both said they get along well. But Pimentel acknowledged that sometimes, the roles get mixed up. 

“It gets confusing, because she has a strong personality and I do, as well, so sometimes, I’m scolding her and I don’t know if I’m doing it as a manager or as a mother,” she said. 

Soffia quickly jumped in, saying, “It’s definitely as a mother, because sometimes she says things that a manager wouldn’t, like she calls me ‘lazy.’”

It’s hard to imagine MC Soffia being lazy. She, her mom and grandmother do everything themselves, from managing their indie label to booking concerts to posting on social media. Just last month, MC Soffia released an EP with the Canadian DJ duo Gold Up.

Kauan Ferreira, a cultural producer who writes for different publications, said that he has been following MC Soffia’s work since 2015 — when she was 11 years old.

“She was singing about playing with dolls, but it was a Black doll, so she was talking about the reality of Black children, which generated media interest as well,” he said.

MC Soffia’s songs are often used in schools in Brazil. And Ferreira said that she is also a role model for the LGBTQ community — a few years ago, she came out as bisexual.

But he said that ultimately, it’s her music that stands out.

“When I am a bit sad, I like to listen to feminine rap because it lifts me up,” he said. “Aniversário, or “Birthday,” it’s one of her best songs in my opinion, because she talks about her power without taking other people down,” he said. 

Her success is particularly remarkable considering her gender. 

“It’s not common today in Brazil for a woman to be successful in hip-hop,” said Matheus Ramos, who writes about culture and entertainment for the website Notícia Preta, which caters to Black people in Brazil. 

“She knows she is a showcase for Black women who live in the inner cities and in the favelas. She’s a pillar, a role model,” Ramos said. 

But MC Soffia said that she doesn’t consider herself famous yet.

“I want to focus on this new album, on my songs, because I feel my career can still blow up even bigger,” she said, adding that her goal is to be so famous that she will get to work with some of her idols: Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé.