Three years after the triumph of his album The bad want, the Catalan artist releases the long-awaited Motomami Friday, March 18. The influence of reggaeton comes to mingle with those of flamenco and pop to feed an international ambition, details the Spanish weekly The weekly country.
A fleeting spark shines in Rosalía’s smile. Like a diamond at the center of the center of gravity. Its red shards are reminiscent of a heart, but on closer inspection and at the right time, we can see small open wings between the two incisors: it’s a butterfly.
Rosalía, born 29 years ago in Sant Cugat del Vallès, near Barcelona, smiles, points a finger at the jewel in her mouth and says: “Ah yes, it does look like a heart, but it’s a butterfly. I had it posed for the album.”
This Monday morning in February, she displays a spontaneous, dazzling smile. She has been back home in Barcelona for a fortnight, and her schedule is busy in this period of the launch of her highly anticipated new album, Motomami, which is released by Sony on March 18.
She arrives at the appointed time. The black van with tinted windows parks in front of the studios of an industrial hangar in Barcelona. She descends on the arm of her companion, the Puerto Rican rapper Rauw Alejandro. He is well-mannered and amiable, but refrains from commenting on Rosalía who, from time to time, gives him looks and smiles, but is very focused on her daily duties: interview, make-up, hairdressing, dressing…
She hardly ever leaves her sister Pilar, known as Pili, one of her closest collaborators, whom she describes as a“visual artist”. Pilar, who also refuses to make the slightest declaration, is attentive to everything and knows how to get the best out of her little sister who, during the photo shoot, moves at an impeccable pace.
She revolutionized Spanish music
Rosalía always sets her own pace. And this, since entering the Taller de Musícs, a music school in the Raval district of Barcelona. As Lluís Cabrera, founder of this innovative music centre, recalls, at the time she had already “a huge talent”. She was 16 years old. She was a student “insatiable”, who played both electric guitar and piano, knew jazz and spoke good English.
After hearing the legendary singer [chanteur de flamenco] andalou Island Shrimp [1950-1992] in a friend’s car, in a parking lot, she took up flamenco. “She had something very old, and at the same time it was the most modern thing we had heard for forty years”, continues Cabrera. She then joined the Higher School of Music of Catalonia (Esmuc), where she was the best student in flamenco singing, and prepared her graduation project which she made her second album, The bad want (2018).
More than three years after this masterstroke, which revolutionized Spanish music and propelled the singer onto the international scene, all eyes are on her. “You are never too late if you follow your rhythm”, she assures.
That of Rosalía is carried by a double driving force: that of the international star, who calculates the slightest of his gestures, with the backing of advertising and promotional campaigns, and that of the artist capable of metamorphosing at an astonishing speed, by bringing a decisive voice to each of the genres it addresses.
Hits and featurings
In fact, in Motomami, she tackles several styles (pop, bachata, dembow, reggaeton…), engaging her own voice to travel in different registers. “Some people think you can make music with algorithms. But it is not by thinking with numbers that one composes words, that one distorts voices or that one creates an asymmetrical structure. It is done by feeling. We are looking for emotion”, she points out.
Since the release ofThe bad want, she became one of the artists of the Sony team in the United States, under the label of Columbia Records, the very one who signed Adele, AC / DC, Bruce Springsteen or Beyoncé. It is exceptional for a Spanish artist. But Rosalía lives this with serenity. “In general, in the recording industry, everything is done at a frantic pace, but I advance step by step”, she says.
Between her two records, she has not stopped releasing songs that have become hits, has multiplied remarkable collaborations with artists such as J. Balvin, Travis Scott and Ozuna, and has also been invited by stars such as Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd and Tokischa. His way of working, along with that of other pop, reggaeton and urban music stars, has changed the course of an industry that swears by singles.
However, Motomami is much more than a compilation of singles. It is an ambitious work of sixteen compositions retracing Rosalía’s journey over the past three years:
I particularly wanted this project to be very focused. I wanted the record to be a bit like a snapshot of a photographer. Something sincere. I was looking for the way to capture my moment.”
Rosalía’s moment is that of an artist who seeks to
[…]
Fernando Navarro
Source
Included in the Sunday delivery of El País since the creation of the daily in 1976, the magazine is renowned for its signatures and the diversity of its long-term reporting. This sleek weekly supplement is also interested in a
[…]
Read more