If Rayden’s career has stood out for something, it is for the break with stereotypes that have accompanied urban genres for so long. “I like to be the frontrunner,” she admits with a laugh. “Prejudices were already something more hollow and atrophied than anything else, it was a matter of time before they disappearedand proposals like mine or Residente’s serve to build bridges,” he adds.
A mixture with other styles that in no case was born as something “aesthetic”, as he himself explains, but was born from his own musical interests, which led him to imagine “impossible collaborations”. Time, he claims, has ended up proving him right: “Music consists of that, it is very nice to see how exciting sounds can be generated that had not been proposed”.
An evolution that is not exclusive to rap, since, except for very entrenched styles, “everything else is mutating”. The case of rap, however, has been one of the most obvious. In this sense, Rayden points out that “You can’t ask the genre for hermeticism when it has drunk from sampling. It would be very narcissistic to believe that rap is immovable when it is born from fusion itself”. Something that, therefore, can never mean a loss of its essence.
anti-democratic rap
Rayden’s musical career has been meteoric since he realized that he could live from his verses. “I saw in a documentary about Spanish rap that in one of the temples of urban music in Mexico, the clerk took out our demo of A3Bandas. That’s when I realized that maybe we had something to tell”says the singer.
Despite his beginnings in a group, the artist from Madrid realized that his thing was solo rap. “My head is an inhospitable place. Having to bring democracy to a band would be headbutting me, I love coming up with crazy ideas and being adventurous. In a band the pressure is less, but I wouldn’t feel so fulfilled”says Rayden, who defines rap as an act “of rebellion, nonconformity and disrespect, in the kindest sense, of everything preconceived.”
Likewise, the man from Madrid sees the future of the genre “more open than ever”, and is “delighted” to be able to live “in these times without so much prejudice”. In this regard, Rayden believes that the best example is the playlists of young people: “A person can have on his list Fernandito Costa, and from there jump to Vetusta Morla or the Rolling Stones. That’s something that freaks me out”. The rapper does not hesitate to take it to his own territory, and emphasizes the fact that “Even the most orthodox rap is becoming mainstream”.
As for his own future, Rayden announces that he is already working on his new album, which is scheduled to be released in Novemberand in the publication of a novel that will be released in February 2023. However, he says he is now focused on finishing the current tour, with up to 35 concerts in the summer, including the South Pyrenees, and a landing in Latin America in Autumn.