Rauw Alejandro licks the wounds of his breakup with Rosalía at Palau Sant Jordi

2023-09-02 08:37:10

Fa just two years since his first Palau Sant Jordii Raw Alejandro has since taken a giant step as a media personality, to the sound of his pink press gags with Rosalía, but also as an artist, and his show this Friday illustrated it at once reggaeton that goes a little beyond ordinary rhetoric. ‘Perreo’ and erotic festival rite, yes, but also risky settings, electro-pop with retrofuturistic echoes and ‘freestyle’ grafts in a session based on these two twinned albums, ‘Saturn’ i ‘Saturn Beach’.

Apparently, his mother used to tell him that he had a gift that it was not of this world, and hence these galactic titles. Perhaps this left him with a high notion of himself. ‘Rauleeto’ is one of those who, to increase the public’s anxiety, dilates (exaggeratedly) the prelude to his entrance on the scene: a very long half hour of canned music, in the dark and with the screens spitting advertising claims and the tour itinerary, into which a song by Rosalía, ‘La combi Versace’, slipped in.

First warning, because the pride of Sant Esteve ses Rovires he would end up being the great ghostly presence of the night. The inspiring, first, of his most libidinous verses: ‘No me sueltes’, carrier of a lyric that would have had a heart attack Corín Tellado (“‘me encanta cómo tú te pone’ / bien puta en toa’ las posicione'”), a piece that Rauw married with hits like ‘De Carolina’, which proudly alludes to the Puerto Rican municipality of this name: “‘Ya somo’ rich’, ante’ éramo’ poor’ / Now in Spain they don’t shout: ¡Olé!'”.

‘motomami’ nostalgia

Simple show, with video and dancers, nothing more, focused on the character and his songbook rich in mischief (‘Corazones despeinados’, awake toned with female voices and rich in bass), and open to changes of pattern. There was the romantic Rauw, without blunts, which after the steamy ‘Museo’ and the playful ‘Strawberry kiwi’, evoked his blown-up emotional breakup by introducing ‘Today here’: “It’s hard to forget someone you imagined spending the rest of your life with, isn’t it?”

And more explicit was still his unexpected assault, “only in Barcelona” (he didn’t sing it the other night in Valencia) in ‘Hayami hana’, the suffering ballad, dedicated to Rosalía Vila, which he published a few weeks ago. «I will never touch her again in my life», he assured (we’ll see). And another surprise: the duet of ‘Beso’, with his ex mirroring him on screen.

Rauw made Rosalía think too when he spoke in one Catalan “a little better” (boasted) that last time. But, even though he played mercilessly with the absent figure, the session remembered that his ‘hits’ are his and no one else’s. like this one ‘Everything about you’ which echoed in Sant Jordi with a gorgeous tropical synth-pop.