Rosalia Debuts ‘Hentai,’ The Explicit Song That Divided TikTok

Again in January, the Spanish singer Rosalía posted a video on TikTok that confirmed her perched on a mountain peak someplace, blanketed in falling snow. A brief clip of “Hentai,” a piano-led, daydream of a tune, performed whereas she giggled alongside to its unapologetically specific lyrics; translated in English, they go, “I wanna experience you want I experience my bike/Make me a tape like Spike/I whipped it till it received stiff/Within the second place is fucking you/Within the first place is God.”

Rapidly, dozens of bewildered feedback piled up beneath the video (“I hope it is a joke,” one individual wrote), although the response appeared considerably untimely with out the context of the total tune. Rosalia lastly dropped “Hentai” in its entirety on Wednesday, and it finally ends up being a genuinely intriguing, fastidiously produced ballad concerning the absolute pleasures of, effectively, good dick. Given her previous work, it’s a stunning, overtly sex-positive assertion that takes her someplace new.

She juxtaposes the delicacy of the music and her voice, which is Judy Garland-level heat, with the writing, which is veiled however nonetheless provocative (“Costly like he has a diamond on the tip,” she sings at one level). It performs with the type of lyricism that folks let males get away with on a regular basis and provides contrasts by means of sudden manufacturing decisions. Because the depth builds up, she chirps “so, so, so, so, so, so good” whereas industrial-sounding, Arca-style machine weapons shoot off within the distance. In an accompanying video, directed by Mitch Ryan, she rides a mechanical bull in a sun-lit subject and writhes in mattress, celebrating pure ecstasy.

The observe is from her upcoming album Motomami, which is out on Friday, March 18. Rosalia is premiering the album with an elaborate Stillz-directed efficiency on TikTok the evening earlier than. Final weekend, she carried out two songs from the LP on SNL, turning into the primary lady to carry out each songs solely in Spanish on the present.