MC Battle

Desnivela is ready to make her mark on competitive freestyle

Get to know the first woman to compete in a Red Bull Batalla USA National Final.

By Lucy O’Neal

12 min readPublished on 11/26/2024 · 6:20 PM UTC

Although she’s only 24, Colombia’s Maira Camila Perez Amarillo has been preparing for this moment for nearly a decade. The now California-based MC proved that anything men can do we can do—yes—better. Camila, officially known as Desnivela, is officially the first woman to have made it to Red Bull Batalla’s USA National Final stage.

“My goal was personal,” she tells us. “When you want something too much, and you invest in something without giving up, sometimes you think you've found victory and it's really an even bigger victory.”

Below, we commemorate the historic moment by looking back at what, and who, made her the MC she is today, and what she hopes is to come for both her career and the many other talented women who will follow in her footsteps on the Red Bull Batalla stage.

You can read the interview in Spanish here.

When and how did people start calling you Desnivela (which roughly translates to unlevels)?

Desnivela: I was in a battle and [my opponent] started throwing lines at me. He always told me “you don't have the right level”. And one day he came out rapping and I said “oh, I don't care. It's not that I don't have the level, it's that I'm the one who unlevels you”. And I said “Wow, that sounded cool”. And I had some names, which I'd say were pretty smooth. I mean, at the beginning I had a weird name like Catmi, because of my name Camila and I didn’t like it. Desnivela is a name I’ve had for a while now. Since 2015 I’ve been battling with that name.

Tell us about how your love for freestyle started.

Well it all started because my uncle was into urban music. Like rap at that time, 50 Cent. All that stuff was in English, mostly. I was very young, and I liked that rhythm. I started to like that kind of music. And then another uncle who is closer to my age, he's like 27, 28 years old. He started listening to rap, but in Spanish. He listened to Nach, and he listened to pure rap from Spain, really. And I liked it. I said, “hey, this is done in Spanish!” So I was kind of intrigued. Then I found a battle between Mestiza and Neblina in the park. And I thought, this is my thing.

I had never seen it before. My intention was to look for women singing rap music, and that's what I found, and I liked it a lot. That was in 2002. They did a song called “Respetense” that I lip synced at school. I mean, I got really into it from the moment I saw them, I mean, I loved them…

Red Bull Batalla competitors
© Ian Witlen

That was more than 10 years ago now, you were very young.

Yeah. I was very young. I mean, I heard the music, I liked it. But when I saw the girls freestyling, I was shocked. It was like I'd get to school, I'd say “the teacher is so annoying, I'm the best at doing prose,” and my friends would celebrate me, and would say “let's do music with Arcángel”, etc.

Whether it's freestyle, or reggaeton and rap, who are some of your inspirations?

Well in battles, I have quite a lot of female inspiration when it comes to battling and also writing tracks. For example, when it comes to freestyle, I'm a real fan of Colombian women's freestyle, to be honest. I mean, they are very good. Marithea is the Queen of the World, she's the current queen. And I'm also a big fan of Kim. I saw her battles when she was younger, she's Venezuelan too, and I also like her style a lot. So Kim was the first woman to win a Red Bull Batalla National Final in history. Well, I think she's super inspiring because she's the one who broke the stigma that [only] men rapped in battles, and she was also a representation of the Spanish-speaking world, so to speak. I [also] have a lot of friends who are very good. I think that in Colombia there is like a freestyle boom right now, because we have all been rapping for a while.

And outside of freestyle, I like what Azuky is doing. Now she's doing something cool with freestyle. That is a totally different world of music, and I don't listen to music from any of the freestylers.

I also listen to a lot of Colombian women. In Colombia right now there's a boom of women who are really making it big and there's one called Lee Eye, she's from Bogotá and she does a kind of rap with dembow, with jazz, like reggaeton, like everything. She sings, she’s super cool. I also listen to Colombian women a lot. And not from my country, I really like what Nathy Peluso is doing right now… I like that she has her own weird style and doesn't care about anything. They're the ones I listen to most, especially before I go battle.

Who else is in your motivational line-up before you go on stage?

Actually who I see before I go on stage is Cabron and Cambra. It's a style of battle that I really like. They're Spanish, they're really good. I mean, I watch one of their battles and I feel like battling.

How did you get into the Red Bull world this year, what was it about Red Bull Batalla (in the United States) that caught your attention and why?

Well, the battles here in the United States really interested me a lot in Colombia, because I really wanted to improve and reach that next stage.There comes a point where you want to find out where this originates from and it turns out that it's all from here, it's from the United States: rap and freestyle. And I felt like a voracious hunger to know, to feel what it would be like to battle here. And besides that, my plan is to continue battling here in the United States, in the Spanish-speaking battles, but my goal is to learn English to be able to participate in battles in English.

You’re the first woman to make it this far and compete in the finals. How does it feel to know that you're the first to get to that point?

Well, to be honest with you, it was very explosive for me, because I came with that hunger that I told you about from Colombia, because in Colombia I practically went to the biggest stages. Whoever won the regional Street Warriors to go to the national Street Warriors, could go to the exhibition with FMS, and I went to FMS. I was even in a Red Bull Batalla qualifier, but I had never been able to qualify for a Red Bull national final. I mean, for me it was like, I want to qualify for the Red Bull Nationals, I mean, I need it, I want it, I want it, I want it and I couldn't get it. I tried for like five years in Colombia and I didn't get it. And I was like, why didn't I get it, and I thought: I must be doing something wrong here in Colombia and I have to rebuild my world in the place where rap was born. And I said: I'm going to the United States and I came here.

I went to all the battles, and I arrived with that hunger and also the guys couldn't believe that there was a girl who rapped.

And a guy who is great from Los Angeles, called Boss, writes to me and says “Desnivela, let's make a team to represent California, Los Angeles…” I mean, for me it was like, wow, how cool, because I haven't won anything, but he realized that I rap great. To say to me, out of all my peers. And I live six hours away by car. So I said ok, I'm doing things right, I'm not going to get frustrated because normally I would get frustrated, and I wouldn't go back to the competition and I would go somewhere else.

[At the Los Angeles Regional Cup], 54 men signed up and one woman, and I said “f***, I'm going to win because I want to win”, but when I won they said “oh, you know? I mean, you just made history” and I said, “what do you mean, I just made history? I don't understand.” And people told me “yes, no girl has ever been to nationals, they qualified for the regionals, but they could never qualify or win.” And I said, “what!”

My goal was personal, I said I've spent six years going after a Red Bull title, I have to win. And when they told me that, it was like my head told me: when you want something too much, and you invest in something without giving up, sometimes you think you've found the victory and it's really an even bigger victory. All my peers were like “you've changed history” and so on, ‘“you're already the pioneer.”

How did you prepare for the finals and what were some of your thoughts when you were there?

Well, the truth is that I didn't train for the final or nationals because the friends I was going to train with were too busy. Obviously we all wanted to win. So everyone kind of got down and then I had to rap here at home all the time, listen to music, I relaxed, I was kind of calm and didn't try to put so much pressure on myself.

What do you feel like you learned? What was the defining moment that made you grow as a freestyler and as a person in this experience?

Well actually I feel that I've been really scared of this experience, because it helped me...let's say that in a way I consider myself to be someone who is a bit sad and I don't like to talk to people a lot. I kept things to myself a lot and freestyle allowed me to say what I felt, what I wanted to say. I mean, if someone was hurting me, I was a bit shy to say “oh, please, don't do it anymore.” So, when I'm in a battle, or freestyling, or rapping and I make a song, let's say I can just let that out and go on. It's like a tool, I don't know how to define that, but it kind of helps you to let go. Then also sometimes when I fell in love with someone, I would write them a song and I would sing that song until I hated it and I didn't want to sing the song anymore. And when I didn't want to sing the song anymore, I didn't love that person anymore, so to speak. So yeah, it's like a transformation tool.

And what are your aspirations now, what's your vision for your future?

Well, actually I'd like to make music, I'd like to make a living from music. I like freestyle, it's a super fun adrenaline rush that I don't think I'm going to stop doing for many years. I think that until I turn 30, I think I'll stop being out there in the plazas. I really like battles, but I really want to make music, I want to make a living from music, I want to dedicate myself to producing, to educating myself musically. I want to investigate and get into other worlds, like trying to do other things. But I don't have a plan B, so I want to keep doing this.

What kind of music are you interested in doing?

Well I'm currently doing drill. I'd like to do something more like that. I like very underground music, and I'd like to do some reggaeton, like the kind of reggaeton that I hear from the girl that I'm telling you from Colombia. Likewise, I like that kind of music that's like a bit more upbeat. I like the music from before. It's like Nicki Nicole, like she sings nicer things, more melodic. Something like that. I'd like to investigate, not necessarily do it fully yet, to see how it would go. Obviously, I want to keep doing rap and doing trap, dancehall as well.

What are your hopes and your vision for women in this freestyle space? And also, what would you say to women who have that aspiration to make it as far or even further than you in this space, and Red Bull Batalla specifically.

Well, I would tell them that it's always going to seem difficult, just being women. Even though they try to sell us an idea of equality and fairness, it's wrong. And the simple fact that a woman has wanted to freestyle, the only thing I can tell her is to try hard. Because sometimes it happens that you find what you like, and after two years you get it, but it also happens that you try and ten years have gone by, and you don't achieve what you want in your life. So, I would say that if you really like it, you have to kill for it, because that's how battles are. This is a battle, so you just have to know that you like it and if you like it, stand up strong because these are words, and we can bring it the same as men. Also, women talk more, so we all have that going for us.

I mean I’m laughing but I've even said it in battle, “Man, we women always win the arguments, how are you going to win a battle with me.”