Nothing makes you think that ‘Where I want to be’ is a debut album. But, although very unique, it is. Its background, finishes, names that compose it and presentation make it Quevedothe golden boy of Spanish music, have a necessarily special first album due to the determining factors that have marked their previous episodes and that drive each of their movements, and make this one, without a doubt, the most relevant.
The artist from the Canary Islands, who went from being an anonymous young man who was good at rapping to a world star in one year thanks to the hit of the song popularly known as ‘Quédate’ with Bizarrap (the most listened to song in the world for several weeks), he had to reaffirm in a long paper that his crazy 2022 was not just spontaneity. Quevedo, accompanied by his unique voice timbre, took up the challenge and He rightly thought that the best thing -although surely not the easiest thing- was to make a proud album, of course, but also very sincere and with his feet on (his) ground.
It was impossible to do without pride, spiciness (like the obvious ‘Punto G’), cockiness and ‘fronting’ (understand the vacile) in urban genres in which they are almost a genetic condition. And more him, who can boast of having achieved unthinkable things in popularity. But ‘Where I want to be’ is the dizzying journey of a 21-year-old boy in which obvious doubts, longings and irremediable decisions arise, and it is also his response to all this. His place is the Canary Islands, his music is this, in which he does not hide all of the above, and provokes an empathic response from the listener. “2021 sow, 2022 collect, 2023 crown, 2024 disappear”, he sums up in ‘Now what’ and that explains a bit of everything, especially that “disappear”.
‘Ahora qué’ is the first song on the album (with a total of 16, with four collaborations) after a ‘speech’ by the Canarian rapper Cruz Cafuné, a benchmark on the scene, and which serves as a blessing and vindication of the entire musical movement Canary. On this issue Quevedo looks back, recalling what it is impossible for him to have forgotten because it happened very recently: beginnings, colleagues and his grateful memory to all of them.. He is quickly interrupted by a reggaeton eager for human warmth (‘Yankee’) of which there are several doses on the album. ‘Donde quiero estar’ has a lot of reggaeton and surprising brushstrokes, like the rock ‘Luces azules’, in which he exposes his relationship with the stormy and sudden fame (“I think everything moves around me; I don’t know if I’m the monster, it doesn’t let me sleep; they yell at me, they look at me, they grab me. What do they want from me? For a long time the only thing I want is to survive”). She also goes out of her way in ‘Me falta algo’, a piece in which the National Orchestra of Spain participates, laudable packaging and lyrics about a rupture and emptiness. Separation is the theme of ‘Dame’, his accessory collaboration with Omar Montes.
The production is led by his colleague Linton, although the producer Ovy On The Drums is also present in some pieces, such as the remarkable one designed for the perreo ‘Wanda’. The album closes with the song ‘Where I want to be’, a frank exposition that, beyond the many themes designed for dancing and desire, underpins the testimony and the most interesting idea of the album, the one that emerges from the vertigo created by a year dizzying for anyone. “It is surprising to see ‘sold out’ after announcing each ‘show’; but I have more depression at the end of each ‘show’; and this weekend I travel, mommy, I have another ‘show’; and I will swear to myself that I will not give another show “, sings Quevedo.
‘Where I want to be’
Quevedo
Taste the floor records
Reggaeton
★★★★