GROUP AFFILIATION/S: FRANCIS MAGALONA,
THE EVIL STEPSISTERS, HARDWARE SYNDROME
90’S HITS: KALEIDOSCOPE WORLD, BAHAY
YUGYUGAN, BOW-WOW-WOW, GIRL BE MINE, KABATAAN PARA SA KINABUKASAN, MAHIWAGANG
KAMOTE, THREE STARS AND THE SUN, WHOLE LOTTA LOVIN
Francis Durango Magalona (October 4,
1964 – March 6, 2009), also known as FrancisM, Master Rapper, The Mouth and The
Man From Manila, was a Filipino rapper, entrepreneur, songwriter, producer,
actor, director, and photographer.
Born in Mandaluyong City, he was the
first Filipino rapper in the Philippines to cross over into the mainstream. He
was credited for having pioneered the merging of rap with Pinoy rock, becoming
a significant influence to artists in that genre as well. He was also a
television host on MTV Asia and Channel V Philippines and on noontime variety
television show Eat Bulaga! Magalona died seven months after being diagnosed
with acute myelogenous leukemia.Magalona was later awarded a posthumous
Presidential Medal of Merit. The award's citation noted that it had been given
"for his musical and artistic brilliance, his deep faith in the Filipino
and his sense of national pride that continue to inspire us.
Magalona was the eighth of the nine
children of actors Pancho Magalona and Tita Duran, popular film stars of the
1940s and 1950s. His grandfather, Enrique B. Magalona, was a politician and
served as a Senator of the Philippines from 1946 to 1949 and from 1949 to 1955.
He graduated from High School at the Don Bosco Technical College in Mandaluyong
City from 1978 to 1981 and studied at the San Beda College in Manila from
1981–1984.
Magalona started out as a breakdancer in
the 1980s. He was cast in several Filipino movies including Bagets 2. He was
the resident DJ/rapper in the IBC-13 variety show Loveli'Ness.
Magalona was introduced by co-actor
Richard Gomez to Pia Arroyo at a party in a disco owned by film director
Ishmael Bernal, and the couple got married in 1985. The couple had eight
children, two of whom were Magalona's stepchildren: Unna, Nicolo, Clara, and
television personalities Maxene (Max) (1986), Francis Jr. (Frank) (1987), Saab
(1988), Elmo (1994) and Arkin Magalona, who entered showbiz to follow their
father's footsteps.
In 1990, he released the album Yo!, the
first commercially released Filipino rap album. Yo! included several popular
singles such as "Mga Kababayan" (Fellow Countrymen), "Gotta Let
'Cha Know", "Cold Summer Nights", and a duet with Pia Arroyo
"Loving You Baby". With tracks that featured politically conscious
and thought-provoking rhymes in both English and Tagalog, Yo! was a big success
and helped catapult Filipino hip hop from underground to mainstream status. It
also marked the birth of Makabayang (nationalistic) rap in Filipino hip hop.
In 1992, Francis Magalona released Rap
Is FrancisM (1992). With tracks addressing the various cultural and social
problems that plagued his country such as drug addiction in "Mga
Praning" (Paranoids), political instability in "Halalan"
(Elections) as well as the detrimental effects of a colonial mentality in
"Tayo'y Mga Pinoy" (We Are Filipinos), the record's complexity and
conscious message quickly earned it its classic status and became the standard
by which future albums of the genre were to be compared]. This album helped tag
Magalona as one of the most politically conscious voices of his generation.
