One balmy night in 2002, Pedro Elías Corro headed to a cinema in his hometown of Caracas to watch Jurassic Park III. Immediately, he felt a curious yet unshakable spark of kinship with the cunning and quick-witted velociraptor on-screen. As soon as the credits rolled, he ran back to the small apartment he shared with his grandmother in the barrio of Propatria, an impoverished area on the western side of the city. He fired up his PC and laid down a cascade of synths over a syncopated groove set to 140 BPM—mirroring the scheming freneticism of both his neighbourhood and the dinosaur. Then, an epiphany: he would call the sound "raptor house."

It all started inside his compact bedroom in Propatria's Block 11. Known as "grandma's room" among his friends, here a young Corro began to sketch out the future of Venezuela's most important electronic music movement. The space, painted floor to ceiling in chartreuse, was adorned with sports caps, racks of burnt CDs, an old computer and car speakers that Corro would repurpose as monitors. He'd fawn over records—usually '90s techno and Eurodance; the "boom boom boom" music, as his grandmother called it—and experiment with cracked versions of eJay and Fruity Loops until dawn.

Corro is now known as DJ Babatr, AKA DJ Baba the Raptor. Like Corro, raptor house is a reflection of its complex mother city: intense, hyperactive, unequivocally Caribbean and alive. "It's music made in the barrio, for the barrio," Corro enthused to me in Spanish across a coffee table in East London. Raptor house's rhythmic DNA, inherited from the Afro-Venezuelan Indigenous musical tradition of tambores, imbues his art with an innate sense of communion and ritual. But what started as a playful, tropicalised reinterpretation of '90s techno snowballed into a cultural phenomenon with its own dances and aesthetic codes, from blinding peroxide hair to iced-out Jordans.

Raptor house became an identity, a lifestyle—one that captured the realities of the ghetto with accuracy and, crucially, with love. Fittingly, Corro began to spread the gospel of raptor house at street level. His 2002 breakout hit, "Las Lomas," named after the barrio of the same name, became a local anthem that blared from Toyota Corolla speakers, rooftop raves and street dance-offs. Its chest-rattling bass and ecstatic synth breakdown epitomises the essence of raptor house: a sonic manifestation of Venezuelan joy and pain, struggle and resilience.

The genre's sweep through the Caracas underground dovetailed with the rise of mobile sound system parties called minitecas. These DIY raves, spontaneously scattered across tower blocks, car parks and makeshift venues, galvanised working-class youth at a time when unrest coloured every aspect of their lives. The parties, also known as matinés, folded into a wider subculture of barrio-made dance music referred to as "changa," an umbrella term that includes related musical offshoots such as hard fusion, street house and changa tuki.

But the scene's ascent also led to vilification. Led predominantly by poor, Black artists and dancers, they suffered the rampant classism and racism that still afflicts Venezuelan society today. This discrimination was amplified by fights, sometimes fatal, that would break out after matinés—a cruel irony, given that matinés would take place in the day to get around club age restrictions and help circumvent disturbances at night. To the city's ruling classes, changa culture provided a convenient scapegoat for then-president Hugo Chávez's calculated negligence of the barrio. Soon, the government passed a law targeting the community, and a moral panic erupted. "There was so much mistreatment," Corro recalled with grief. "It was traumatising."

Sensing danger, in 2008 Corro stepped away from music altogether. "I was exhausted by constantly fighting against the current," he admitted. Set to a backdrop of political corruption, extreme violence and an impending humanitarian crisis—one that has made Venezuelans one of the world's largest refugee populations—the flame of raptor house flickered. Corro focused on his young family, punched into his day job as an automotive colourist and produced tracks when inspiration struck.

Then, "Xtasis." After 14 years in relative obscurity, Corro linked up with then-budding Miami producer Nick León for the unexpected club smash that woke the world up to raptor house's exhilarating sounds. "After everything that happened, I thought, 'Let me just try,'" Corro said. "Let me offer myself to the world one more time."

It paid off: "Xtasis," released in 2022 by trailblazing Colombian label TraTraTrax and backed by a Pearson Sound remix, upended contemporary dance floors and electrified the music industry (even topping RA's Tracks of the Year 2022). In 2023, Hyperdub founder Kode9 reworked "Las Lomas" into a murky IDM exploration, and "Mek3fe," a collaboration with fellow Caraqueña experimentalist Arca, connected the dots between Venezuela's past and present. That same year, at the age of 47, Corro played his first gig overseas at Primavera Sound Barcelona—a feverishly received set that brought him to tears after grafting for so long.

A legend has finally collected his long-overdue flowers; a vital Latine musical legacy has endured. Where to next? "That's the question," Corro pondered, flashing his braces in a grin. "It's about making raptor house futureproof."

What defines raptor house?

It's a tropical fusion of trance, techno, hard house—and a huge desire to party. I wanted to make dance music that, first of all, is dedicated to the barrio. It's the sound of Venezuelans wanting to do something of our own in an industry in which we didn't [yet] know that the colour of our skin or social class was going to be a problem.

You first started producing in Propatria in the '90s—a neighbourhood that has been historically deprived and disenfranchised. How did you access music production?

Back in '99, I was doing it without the slightest clue. I had an old computer and decided I wanted to try to find a programme that let me create a bass drum and synthesiser line, let alone at 140 BPM. I downloaded this software programme called eJay, but it wasn't really suited to producing at 140, until I got Fruity Loops 3.0. That's where I learned to cut, make lines around sounds and create four-on-the-floor. I'd create the rhythmic patterns through eJay, then cut pieces of synth and run them through Fruity Loops without a sequencer or emulator.

Raptor house is a product of making something out of nothing. I didn't know that an mp3 at 96 kHz was a bad sound. I didn't know what delay, reverb or automation was. I learned that as I went along. Then in 2002 I met a friend called Robert Delgado, AKA DJ Lemad, and he was kind enough to tell me, "Hey, this is how you achieve the delay that you like." Do you know how I did delays before? I just used to gradually lower the volume by hand.

You once told me you're like a secretary in the studio, just hitting a bunch of keys on autopilot, clack-clack-clack.

I don't even look at the keyboard anymore because I know where every command is. It's been so long that I can practically produce in my sleep. But the tool that truly created raptor house is Acid Pro 4. It totally opened my eyes after using Fruity Loops for so long—a world full of possibilities. This was an escape from the crime that you knew very well in Venezuela. While my friends were working on the corners, I was at home glued to Acid Pro on my computer, like a nerd to a PlayStation.

I was 15 when I first went to a miniteca—that's where I experienced your music for the first time. I was shocked this existed in Caracas because most clubs were playing Eurodance and techno.

When I first started playing, I was around 25, and my audience was high-school students like you. My first party was a matiné in [the neighbourhood] Hipocampo on a Sunday. Nobody knew who I was until I became popular because of my track "La Marihuana," which said, "Smoke marijuana to have fun / to enjoy." For teenagers, that was everything. Then I got a Friday residency at this billiards spot, La Iguana Café, thanks to a producer friend of mine called Eduard Galindo. The venue said they'd try me out for a month. They let me play two weekends in a row, and when they swapped me out on the third weekend, no one turned up. The kids said, "If Baba isn't playing, we're not coming." The rest is history.

What were your first experiences of dance music, as a fan?

I listened to salsa brava, but idolised artists like CJ Bolland and Carl Cox. The Venezuela I grew up in was a different time. We actually had access to club music; we called it "techno house." There are many producers that not only I love, but many people here do. You can play "It's My Life" by Dr. Alban or Todd Terry's "Samba" and the crowds are happy.

At what point did you realise raptor house was becoming a movement?

It wasn't until the end of 2002 that the sound of raptor house was created with my track "Las Lomas." I played a rooftop party in my neighbourhood, overlooking all of Propatria, and it was absolutely packed—I estimate more than 2,000 people—totally DIY, with no money. At that moment, I knew this was something special. But unfortunately, it was also the beginning of the end, because the majority of people involved in the birth of raptor house are either completely out or resting in peace. Those who survived [the violence of] the barrio during this era then rejected the scene.

I was around 30 when I retired from raptor house—I just had to step away because of the social stigma. I'm an automotive colourist by trade and, at the time, I was still an assistant. I didn't mind just going back to work. I had a month-old daughter then and preferred to give her a normal life than to continue suffering abuse on the weekends. It was traumatising. Today, there are people who have written to me from that time and I don't even answer. After you didn't love me then, you're going to love me now? Don't be a hypocrite.

A lot of Venezuela's elite class don't realise music is a lifeline for the barrio.

My grandmother is still alive. When I started making music, she'd look at my record collection and say, "This is a lazy person's game, son, that's not going to get you anywhere." I remember that around 2002 or 2003, when raptor house exploded, crime also exploded in my building. Some people violently killed a police officer. My grandmother was giving thanks to music; she told me it saved my life. And it's true, it did.

Did you have any other musical experience before this?

I learned to play tambor campana [Afro-Indigenous one-headed drum] when I was younger but never stuck to it. One day, I was asked to do some remixes for [Afro-Indigenous folk singer] Betsayda Machado. I didn't know who she was, but they were offering me $600 to do the remix, so I agreed. They said, "We looked for several remixers, but your music is the closest thing to tambores." It's funny, raptor house's groove wasn't purposefully made to sound like tambores, but when they sent me Betsayda's stems and I put the raptor house groove on it, I was shocked. The similarities were immediately clear to me: it was like I was trying to play Venezuelan tambores but in electronic music. That's when I discovered that this is something that, no matter where I draw influence from, runs through our veins. The essence of raptor house is indebted to the Afro-folkloric music of Venezuela.

Tambores is the sound of our cultural traditions—from weddings to religious gatherings to house parties. It doesn't matter your age or social class, at the end of any good rave, tambores always come on.

It was so eye-opening. I'm a producer who's been in constant evolution without realising it. Until I toured, I didn't realise that I'd learned so much about my own musical responses from my cultural surroundings, whatever they may be. The first time I ever played outside of Latin America was for Boiler Room at Primavera Sound 2023 and remembered thinking, 'There's nothing Venezuelan here, but [I'm surrounded by beats] I've listened to all my life.' That made me mix with such pleasure. When I went out exploring around the festival, I also actually heard raptor house! I walked by VTSS's set and she played three of my songs in a row.

There are many producers now trying to emulate raptor house but most aren't doing it right. Where are they falling short?

This is a question only a Venezuelan could ask. I think the closest to it currently is Gu [TSVI]. He's doing it fairly well, but recently he tried to really nail the sound, and the formula didn't work.

Was it "Movimiento?"

Yes, and it's a great song—it's just not raptor house. It's guaracha. Any Latine producer can tell you what I do is totally different.

A lot of [non-Latine] people hear a Latin electronic track at 140 BPM and immediately think, 'guaracha.'

There's our main problem: identity. Unfortunately, when you don't have a close connection to our identity, it's difficult for people to understand how closely raptor house is linked to the urban street movement. It's not hip-hop, but it's very intertwined with our version of the streets, with rebellion and the austerity a person faces in the barrio.

It's a sound born from Venezuela's greatest curse, after our government: the class divide.

Exactly. Raptor house is like rap; it has a lot of anthropological heritage, because it's a sound born from a lack of, say, a Moog synthesiser, or the adequate tools to make this type of music. Raptor house's soul lives in the precariousness of the streets. The problem is that the groove can't be replicated because [other people] don't have the right gallery of sounds or experience. The most honest answer I can give you is: it's because they lack street smarts. Many people don't understand that raptor house is a direct result of the violent streets of Caracas.

Many wealthy people in Venezuela couldn't even understand that because they haven't experienced these conditions.

People see the results but forget about the process—and this is what we're finally talking about now. Talking about production techniques is easy, but getting the context of what our country and conditions are like isn't.

I mean, there's universal delinquency, but this is about violence, rebellion, all these things, right? Resilience comes after a process of rebellion. Remember that if you don't intimately experience certain things, you won't understand. I'll never understand what Wu-Tang Clan went through to come up with their songs or how Ice Cube lived those streets to write those lyrics.

You're a pioneer of this genre and finally seeing some reward for your work. You've told me many times, "This is my music," and felt a real sense of ownership over it. But what's the future of raptor house? Who's going to continue this tradition? Who's going to make new tracks?

For the first time in 20 years, I'm seeing people in our country feeling proud. A wave of young people who don't even know me are starting to make fusions of drill and raptor house. Puerto Rico has reggaeton, Dominican Republic has dembow, Colombia has guaracha and Venezuela has raptor house. That's a source of pride for me. Next year, I want to organise raptor house workshops. Not a party, but an educational setting where I can give away all my knowledge and experience.

Would this be in Venezuela?

It should be there first.

This is music for everyone to enjoy. But we're talking about who has the authority and genuine context to carry this legacy forward. Someone who understands the codes and can build on them, not a European producer taking ownership or profiting off this sound.

[Raptor house dancer] Elberth El Maestro cries to me out of pure emotion about this topic sometimes. He tells me, "Baba, we have to do it." And I told him, "Look, the problem with doing it in Venezuela is that it has to be free." A not-for-profit event. We need the support of the global electronic community in order to educate young people here and continue raptor house. We need to give that message and make it purely Venezuelan.

You know, I'm going to be 48 soon. I'm not going to take raptor house to the grave because that's not what I want. The idea is for me to find ways to diversify my sound, to open up. It's about providing free access and allowing whoever can to take advantage of it. From there, we'll see who it will be.

Something very apparent is that raptor house has become an identity beyond music.

From the dancing to the glasses, the clothes and bright hair to the Jordans. These are all visual signifiers of raptor house, and the derogatory word the government and upper class used to call us: "tukis." But I'm not committed to appearances or class mobility; I'm committed to music. The second you start to care about anything else, you throw your own movement down the gutter. You lose your sense of artistry and start selling fake dreams.

What musical movements do you connect with outside of raptor house?

I respect guaracha; we share a BPM and come from sister countries. But it's favela funk [AKA baile funk] that shares a spirit with raptor house. The favela; the Afro majority; the dancing. They may have internal wars between each favela's style of funk, but the movement never dies. Funk artists are proud to show their homes, tunes, customs and the colour of their skin. They don't consider themselves marginalised. This is their reality and this is how they're expressing it, with pride.

The universal DNA of struggle. Which Venezuelan artists do you admire today?

Lil Supa. He's the most authentic, admirable and on-the-ground artist that I've ever had the pleasure of listening to in Caracas.

In recent years, raptor house and changa culture has been more accepted in Venezuela, either because of rediscovery or a more tolerant society. What's the scene like right now?

Everything has changed drastically. Minitecas all but disappeared because they weren't profitable in terms of business. But then a new phenomenon appeared: big cars with huge sound systems in the boot—it's very fashionable. All the minitequeros [sound system organisers] have different points of view, but one thing everyone agrees on is how mad it is that this musical movement was so underappreciated. We've always looked outwards, but never inwards.

Have those attitudes changed now?

I'm a traveller, an eternal tourist, like many Venezuelans. I started touring for the first time in 2022 and now I understand that the Venezuelan diaspora did support me. I just didn't see it because I was being attacked by the upper classes. When I performed at Berghain for the first time [in 2023], I played "Las Lomas" and saw people turning pale, dancing and crying. I never thought people would react like that. Turns out that there were a lot of Venezuelans on the dance floor.

We're one of the biggest refugee populations in the world, scattered across the globe, away from our families and culture. With the current dictatorship, there's no real change in sight. It got worse again this year.

I now understand what it's like experiencing Venezuela from afar. When the results of the recent elections were announced, I was arriving in London. I've never felt so nervous and bad in my life. I finally understand the anxiety. There has been so much violence in Venezuela the past few months; they're killing and imprisoning people illegally—people from the barrio. I'm not pro any politician. But the election was fair and people want change. Accept it.

Let's talk about "Xtasis," your global breakout hit. In 2022, it felt like every dance floor you stepped on was blaring the tune. How did you end up collaborating with Nick León?

One day, I'm quietly working at the hardware shop. I got a few pings on my phone and noticed that some guy called Nick León had just spent $100 on my Bandcamp. I'm usually very generous with sending my tracks out so I thanked him for buying my tracks.

He clearly wanted to support you.

It was around the end of 2021. [DJ and producer] Phran told me, "This is a very well-known DJ in Miami and he's in love with your music." So my [friend and producer] v1fro sent me a SoundCloud link to some of Nick's songs, and I think, 'Well, this doesn't really sound like me but it's nice for him.' Nick ends up sending me a demo and I'll be honest: it was absolutely fried.

I took it home and started working on it—it took me about a month and a half, which for me, is slow. I'm usually very quick and efficient with production, taking only five to ten days. So I sit down, run the track through Acid Pro and start moving stuff here and there. I added the groove, the filter, the vocal. My wife walked by and said, "The song is sounding beautiful," and my daughter told me, "Daddy, I like that song." They never comment on any of my music.

What's the vocal sample?

Venezuelan Afro-Indigenous ritual chants.

Did you record it directly from a ceremony?

That's my secret.

What happened next?

Nick wrote to me the next Monday and said, "Please send me the latest version so I can work on it." I said, "Sure, do what you want with this." Then I didn't hear from Nick for a month. When he reappeared, he'd added his parts to it, and wrote to me saying, "I love this, thank you," before taking it to TraTraTrax. I'm so grateful to him. Nick is my friend now—I actually have very little dealings with Verraco and the label guys—but they've always been very honest with me and had a strong vision. That song really got me going.

And they knew exactly how to get more eyes on you with the Pearson Sound remix. Did you know anything about Hessle Audio before this?

I remember Verraco tagging me in a video of Ben UFO playing the track. I had no idea who that man was. At this point, I also hadn't heard the Pearson Sound remix—I didn't have a clue about him either. I'm from an older generation. I started paying more attention after that remix and got a better understanding of Hessle. Then it just blew up. Resident Advisor and Crack Magazine both wrote to me congratulating me for winning Track of the Year 2022. The track was played at clubs and festivals all over the world. Recently, people in Berlin asked me why I haven't done another song with Nick. Well, because Nick's tracks don't usually sound like "Xtasis." "Xtasis" is raptor house.

How has it felt playing to this completely new audience?

My friend Florentino told me, "With your last album, you changed your audience. Yes, you're still underground, but if you haven't already realised, you have more and more white people at your parties, because they didn't understand you and now they are trying to understand you."

It's curious that in order to be understood en masse, you had to collaborate with a scene that already has its own musical languages.

Well, this audience certainly doesn't fully understand my codes—not like Latines would. I'm not going to say that TraTraTrax is the best label, but they're about to be the best label for Latin American electronic music. They take risks and understand our essence. I've always had the vision that, like TraTraTrax in Colombia, Venezuelans also have the right to our own platform.

What lies in your future?

First of all, I ask God to give me life, health and stability. Right now, and I'll say this for the first time, I'm writing an album for Nyege Nyege Tapes. It feels like my duty to make an album for the dancers in Africa and for them to know what raptor house is, and where it came from. I've only been making it for around a month and trying to figure out how to get all my ideas down. That means coming to Europe less. I'm more interested in my future as a producer. My real dream is to sit in a studio to work all day and leave my touring days behind, and still make a living. That is the essence of my artistry; the studio is my home. I've met very humble people and great artists with very big hearts. I've had a good time, but my future is continuing my study of electronic music and expanding the scene within our country.

Preserving and continuing el movimiento.

This isn't just about DJ Babatr—it's about the raptor house of Venezuela.