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11 February, 2024
Ana Tijoux has simply gifted us with a brand new album, Vida, her first in ten years, and I believe that is vital, and never simply because she determined to take the longest hiatus in her profession proper across the peak of her worldwide recognition, but additionally as a result of stated hiatus coincided with the largest tectonic shift within the music panorama of our occasions. It was proper round a decade in the past that Spotify launched in Latin America, streaming took over the business and imposed the tacit rule of dropping new songs each different week with a purpose to stay related to the tyrannic playlisting algorithms, and this, in flip, coincided with (or resulted in) the city Latino music takeover.
Certain, she hasn’t been fully silent, she dropped some singles, did just a few collaborations, toured and even grew to become a broadcast creator in 2023. She didn’t precisely go into hiding. However bear in mind, she was one of many high feminine rappers to cross-over internationally at a time when rap in Spanish was nonetheless just about an oddity to the ears of the anglophone world viewers – these had been the times earlier than Despacito, Unhealthy Bunny, Rosalía and the Latin lure revolution. Hip-hop had been alive and thriving in Latin America for many years earlier than that – and Ms. Tijoux had been a basic a part of it, since her breakthrough debut with Makiza in Santiago de Chile in 1998 – however the style wasn’t actually making a lot noise outdoors of the area of interest. It was an underground phenomenon solely for Latino hip-hop heads and it was anticipated to stay like that. So, the truth that she managed to get the eye of the English-speaking critics and tastemakers (Thom Yorke included) was big! Then the revolution occurred and all Latin rap derivatives (encompassed below the “city” umbrella) grew to become large, an entire new wave of superstars went viral in a single day and now it’s under no circumstances unusual to listen to rapping in Spanish – usually carried out by feminine vocalists – on the very high of the worldwide charts. For higher or for worse, Ana Tijoux appears to have missed that growth. And he or she appears OK with that.
With Vida, the French-born Chilean femcee doesn’t appear to point out curiosity in reasserting her declare for the throne or competing with the youthful era, she’s created an entire new lane, a protected area for the extra mature viewers who’re extra serious about soulful songs with deeper messages than booty-shaking for fifteen seconds in a TikTok choreography. Rap remains to be the primary entreé she’s serving and hip-hop tradition remains to be very current, she offers props to the pioneers and he or she doesn’t ignore the newer tendencies (Latin lure and reggaetón parts are subtly sparkled all through). However she’s not a rapper battling for cypher supremacy, she’s a singer-songwriter who offers with severe issues and delivers cohesive albums, the sort that should be listened to so as, from starting to finish. And that’s what Vida is.
“Millonaria” kick-starts the album by briefly duping us into believing she had jumped on the bandwagon of the present pattern of Latin lure’s obsession with senseless, ostentatious consumerism. Nonetheless, shortly we study that she’s just about mocking stated pattern by claiming her hundreds of thousands are accrued within the type of household, mates and the expanded neighborhood of family members which even contains her cat. Bear in mind, that is an album by a girl in her mid forties, a mom of two, she has no enterprise bragging about luxurious manufacturers or day-dreaming about showers of greenback payments.
Quickly sufficient the lure beats result in four-on-the-floor home music and set the general temper for an album that’s her most explicitly dance-oriented to this point, albeit not within the sense of hands-in-the-air nightclub bangers. It’s uptempo and upbeat, however on the similar time it’s clean and intimate. Once more, her crowd shouldn’t be essentially packing dancefloors, a lot much less twerking in stripclubs, these are some contagious dance grooves however to be higher loved in your headphones whereas curler skating or dancing alone within the intimacy of your front room, as she states on the irresistible “Bailando Sola Aquí”, one of many album’s highlights and an ode to the thrill of residing single. “Niñx” and “Cora” are different excellent examples of this new dance floor-friendly Ana, with a heavy pan-Latino identification and, at moments, flirting with tropical bass, taking us nearer to Bomba Estéreo’s territory.
Ana has just lately misplaced a liked one, and there’s an entire track about this, “Tania”, however as an alternative of going somber and dwelling in grief, she opted for celebrating life with luminous optimism – therefore the album’s title – and what higher manner of doing that than dancing?
There are additionally a handful of moments to decelerate and meditate, and loads of singing combined in along with her distinctive rap move (she sounds far more snug along with her singing voice, one thing she struggled with up to now). This isn’t precisely rap for the hardcore heads, however she serves them as effectively.
In “Tu Sae’” she delivers an epic love letter to hip-hop tradition in its fiftieth anniversary, over a cool old fashioned beat, with top-tier collaborations, thus reaching a standing of hip-hop cred that the majority scene purists would die or kill for. Right here’s the factor about Latin American hip-hop: it is stuffed with purists who’re firmly connected to the orthodox methods of deciphering the tradition and permit little to no experimentation outdoors of the inflexible old-school formulation. There’s an entire parallel scene, largely populated by younger straight males, who brazenly hate something that diverts from the anticipated growth bap beats, anything is heretic. These males are fast to distance themselves from anyone that dares to push the evolution of rap via fusion with different genres (one thing that ladies appear to be extra keen to do, on the whole) and I’m completely positive they’d be fast to level out that they revered Ana Tijoux when she was doing “pure” rapity-rap, with Makiza or on her breakthrough sophomore launch, 1977, however not fairly since. Effectively, guess who acquired to collaborate with an underground legend and defender of hip-hop purism resembling Talib Kweli and, on the identical observe, have the blessing of none apart from PlugOne, a.okay.a. Posnous, of the almighty De La Soul? Proper.
Listening to rap in Spanish shouldn’t be a novelty anymore, audiences around the globe appear much more keen to just accept it, and Ana’s legacy could have had one thing to do with that. She’s not right here making an attempt to turn into the subsequent city pop phenomenon like Karol G or Nathy Peluso, but when any Spanish-language rapper has the cred to get props from the anglophone true-school heads and possibly cross-over at that stage, that’s Ana Tijoux (and possibly Residente, however that’s it).
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