Review: Rosalia’s ‘Motomami’ – Rolling Stone

After Rosalía launched her 2018 album El Mal Querer, a baroque masterwork anchored in solemn flamenco traditions and glowing pop sounds, the Spanish artist’s world cracked huge open, and every thing appeared to hurry at her without delay. There was infinite reward: She was a artistic genius. She was a hero of the avant-garde. She’d saved flamenco. Waves of criticism got here with equal drive: She wasn’t doing genuine flamenco. She wasn’t authentic. She was too industrial. Rosalía stored morphing within the highlight, shapeshifting by means of singles, pulling from genres like reggaeton and hip-hop. She was arduous to pin down, and the discourse round her grew to become a relentless. Individuals identified that she was appropriating from cultures that weren’t hers; followers defended what they noticed as her limitless sense of world-building. She grew to become a lightning rod, eliciting conflicting, divergent responses, like a Rorschach check.

Rosalía’s brazen new album, Motomami, is a response to all that fame, consideration, and discord, one which refracts the noise that’s surrounded her for the previous couple of years, bends it to her will and launches it again into the ether. What she affords is a dizzying, kaleidoscopic self-portrait — brash and bawdy at some turns, crushingly weak at different factors, and utterly ridiculous when it desires to be. Rosalía is uncompromising about who she is and what she desires to do: From the primary seconds of “Saoko,” the hydraulic-charged opener, Rosalía declares herself filled with contradictions and metamorphoses and impulses: “I’m very a lot me, I rework,” she sing-raps. “I’m every thing, I rework.” An virtually deranged association smashes collectively a pattern of the reggaeton favourite “Saoco,” by Daddy Yankee and Wisin, warped piano chords, a jazz interlude, and blasts of distortion.

The tune captures the guiding ethos of Motomami: Nothing is sacred. Rosalía grabs big, acrylic-tipped fistfuls of each sound at her disposal — reggaeton, bachata, salsa, electro-pop, and hip-hop, strengthening her mainstream foothold in Latin pop particularly. All through her total profession, she’s labored not simply as a composer, singer, and lyricist, however as a producer as nicely, and right here, she oversees a grasp group of collaborators that features Michael Uzowuru, Pharrell, Tainy, Sky Rompiendo, and El Guincho. The tracks are refined and meticulously crafted, but nonetheless teeming with a way of motion and spontaneity. Rosalía sings about an previous romance on “Sweet,” a featherweight ballad that out of the blue ripples with a minimal dembow beat. “Bizcochito” is so playful it feels like an ice cream truck rolling by means of the neighborhood, whereas “Cuuute” is constructed on intensely excessive, pitched-up vocals and thuds of darkish, dubby basslines. One main surge of adrenaline comes on the standout “La Combi Versace” with Tokischa, the Dominican powerhouse who joined Rosalía on the only “Linda” final yr.

In contrast to the ornate storytelling on El Mal Querer, which was impressed by a Thirteenth-century Occitan novel, plenty of her new tune lyrics are loud flexes and way more colloquial. (“My swag makes you dizzy/Even your momma sings alongside,” she trills on “Bizcochito.”) Nonetheless, Motomami is all about dualities and competing energies, so there’s additionally a aspect of the LP that’s weighty with emotion. “Genis” is a wrecking ball of a tune that options a few of the most attractive writing on the album. Rosalía addresses the tough realities of a mid-pandemic world to her 10-year-old nephew, singing, “I’m someplace I wouldn’t take you/Nobody’s at peace right here between stars and needles/Marble stars lower into the flooring/Folies everywhere in the streets the place fashions stroll.” An audio snippet of an older relative stressing the significance of household to her makes the tune much more tender-hearted.

“Hentai” reaches a distinct degree of intimacy: Rosalía’s voice floats over a dreamy piano melody, singing with the heat and delicacy of Judy Garland. “I wanna trip you want I trip my bike/Make me a tape like Spike/I whipped it till it acquired stiff/Within the second place is fucking you/Within the first place is God.” She embraces the easy, easy pleasures of intercourse, toying with expectations and contrasts whereas subverting the type of lyrics that males get away with on a regular basis. The depth builds to a climax as Rosalía chirps “so, so, so, so, so, so good,” whereas machine weapons fireplace off within the distance, evoking the manufacturing model of Rosalía’s shut good friend and previous collaborator Arca, whose affect is felt all through.

Occasional exams of boldness don’t pay out; the silliness of “Hen Teriyaki,” for instance, looks as if it ought to reside strictly on TikTok. Different moments, such because the Weeknd collaboration “La Fama,” hint the extra sophisticated elements of Rosalía’s artistry, particularly how as a white, European lady, she’s been left free to dive into Latin and Black Caribbean genres, collaging them collectively in a means that’s celebrated as high-art. “La Fama,” which is mockingly concerning the complexities and disadvantages of fame, drew explicit frustration for its incorporation of bachata, a Dominican style that’s been marginalized and sometimes ignored when it’s carried out by its Black originators. Many felt that if Rosalía was going to experiment with the sound, she may have labored with a Dominican bachata artist — or not touched the style in any respect. There’s a college of considering that can shut that dialog down instantly, insisting that if the music is nice, why create limitations? However high quality isn’t the one end-goal; given the rampant racism and inequality within the leisure enterprise, there’s nice worth in inspecting the broader implications a tune may need within the business, who’s held up as the head of creativity, and what artists with huge platforms and privilege are doing to handle erasure in genres from which they profit. Motomami is commonly extra within the act of breaking down partitions than the results, which is a part of what makes it putting, however the freedom Rosalía feels to do one thing doesn’t at all times imply she must.

A extra easy homage comes on “Delirio de Grandeza,” a salsa experiment that immediately honors the Afro-Cuban sonero Justo Betancourt. As Rosalía sings, the beat skips and a snippet of the Soulja Boy remix of Vistoso Bosses’ “Delirious” sneaks in. It’s an sudden contact that’s virtually sacrilegious on such a traditional tune. The transfer embodies how Rosalía disrupted conventional considering with boundary-pushing pop sounds on El Mal Querer, and it’s a reminder that as a musician, she’s at all times drawn to provocation. It holds infinite attract for her, and it defines her music. If it didn’t fire up feelings, if it didn’t really feel discordant, if it didn’t trigger a scene, it wouldn’t be hers.