Rosalia scrambles cultural codes, remakes pop in her own image
You get a good sense of what Rosalia is up to across her dazzling new album from “Hentai,” a hushed and aching ballad — at least that’s what it starts out as — that comes about a third of the way through the 16-track “Motomami.”
Singing in a high, trilling voice, the Spanish pop phenom, 29, traces a shapely ascending vocal melody over gently ringing piano chords; eventually, a swooning string arrangement flickers to life behind her, lending the song a sort of wistful classic-Hollywood flavor.
Yet the title of “Hentai” refers to a different type of filmmaking — specifically, porn in Japan’s brightly colored anime tradition — while the song’s lyrics describe physical pleasure more vividly than these delicate sounds have trained us to expect: “I wanna ride you like I ride my bike,” she sings in Spanish. Then a juddering drum-machine beat drills into the production, blasting away “Hentai’s” sense of sophisticated calm though not, crucially, its air of emotional longing. It’s not a bait-andswitch, this song; instead, Rosalia’s idea seems to be that sex is worthy of the high-flown treatment that pop music typically reserves for romance.
Recorded around the world (including in Los Angeles, Barcelona and the Dominican Republic) and featuring collaborations with The
Weeknd, Pharrell Williams, Q-Tip, James Blake, her longtime studio partner El Guincho and the trailblazing Puerto Rican producer Tainy, “Motomami” is all about rethinking established cultural boundaries; the LP, Rosalia’s third, brandishes moments of rupture, discord and collision to evoke a modern world that questions — yet still seeks comfort in — old folkways.
Again and again in these gleaming, ice-pick-sharp songs, which blend reggaeton, hip-hop, bachata, R&B and jazz (to name just a few of the styles), she makes improbable connections with little worry over whether the seams are showing; indeed, the seams may be the point of her work in an era when assimilation has lost its luster as a social ideal.
“I contradict myself/ I transform,” she sings in Spanish over a buzzing bass line in the album’s punky opener, “Saoko.” “I’m everything.”
Rosalia broke out in 2018 with the Grammy-winning “El Mal Querer,” which remade flamenco music using electronic textures alongside the form’s tools of acoustic guitar and hand percussion. “Motomami” charts that speedy ascent to pop stardom. In the dramatic “La Fama,” she characterizes fame as “a lousy lover” and a “backstabber who comes as easy as she goes”; “Bulerias,” the only track here rooted explicitly in flamenco, recounts the hard work behind the glamour of celebrity: “To keep standing on my feet,” she sings, “I killed myself 24/7.”
But if fame has taken a toll on Rosalia’s personal life, success has clearly been an artistic boon. “Motomami” practically throbs with the freedom of someone flush with creative capital; its stylistic sprawl shares something with Beyonce’s “Lemonade,” while the album’s mix of harsh noise and sculpted pop melody can recall the music M.I.A. made after “Paper Planes” became a left-field hit in the late 2000s.
In the hypnotic “Candy,” about a breakup with a guy who “broke me but just a little bit,” she threads a sample from a Burial song (which itself samples a track by Ray J) through a clattering reggaeton beat. The title cut, with a springy beat, is 61 seconds of pure cool-kid swagger; “Cuuuuuuuuuute” reaches toward hyperpop with a wild spray of machine-gun percussion.
“Hentai” isn’t the album’s only vocal showcase. Rosalia also sings the stuffing out of “Delirio de Grandeza,” a cover of a vintage Cuban bolero that she tricks out with a scratchy Soulja Boy sample. And then there’s the stripped-down closer, “Sakura,” in which she imagines herself at 80, looking back with a laugh at her days as a pop idol.
Rosalia is also an exceptionally shrewd record-maker: To do her version of bachata, the beloved Dominican style, in “La Fama,” she didn’t recruit a proven bachata singer but rather the Weeknd, whose light, imploring voice turns out to be perfect for the song — and whose megastardom helped guarantee a massive audience for her latest cultural mash-up.
Some will view her strategy as pretty rich in a song about fame’s soul-depleting properties. Rosalia is OK with the paradox.