Puerto Rican rap and urban music band Calle 13 presented a video of their next single recently, with the help of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the guitarist of American band Rage Against The Machine, Tom Morello.
Since June, when the band and Assange met for some hours in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, Residente (René Pérez), Calle 13's vocalist, revealed that they would work along with the Internet activist on a song about freedom of speech.
A few days away from the release of the song, the band showed a preview of "#Multi_viral" in a video showing Residente and Assange harshly criticizing the media and the way they manipulate and censor information.
According to information published by news agency EFE, the 19-Grammy-winning band asked their Twitter followers to write comments about how the media manipulates information, comments which were then "manipulated" to write the lyrics.
"We will use your ideas and we will manipulate them to build a song. We're going to talk about mediocre journalism, but using your voices," said Residente in the video, which had already been seen thousands of times in the first 24 hours of it being uploaded to YouTube.
It's worth noting that the song, which will be officially released Nov. 13th, also features Israeli singer Kamilya Jubran, known for her fusion of Arabic melodies with electronic music and combative lyrics, and Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against The Machine.
Calle 13 has stood out in recent years for composing songs and combining danceable melodies loaded with social criticism, which has caught the attention of activists and band with protest-themed songs throughout the world.
You can see the preview for "#Multi_viral" here: