Mano Brown advises rappers to use notebooks instead of phones

Rapper Mano Brown, a member of Racionais MC’s, has advised a new generation of urban music composers to prioritize physical notebooks over mobile phones for songwriting. During the premiere episode of the series ‘Cidade de Dentro’, released on YouTube and Spotify via Casa de Francisca, Brown argued that writing by hand creates a ‘cloud of words’ around the artist, allowing discarded verses to remain visible for future inspiration.

Brown also emphasized the importance of developing a personal poetic memory and vocabulary. He encouraged artists to build their own ‘internal dictionary’ by working with sounds and letter endings rather than immediately relying on search engines like Google to find rhymes. The discussion, recorded in São Paulo, featured composer Nei Lopes and was mediated by Thalma de Freitas.