Rosalía ushers in her third album with her signature angelic voice while reinventing herself into a “makeup de drag queen” that deserves applause. What she delivers is 40 minutes of the most thrilling, forward-thinking and chaotic music we’ve heard this year.
Her 2018 Grammy-winning ‘El Mal Querer’, was the perfect blend of traditional and modern flamenco sounds with experimental pop flourishes. The results were often electrifying: ‘Bagdad’, a standout single inspired by a Barcelona strip club, cleverly weaved in a sonic nod to Justin Timberlake‘s ‘Cry Me A River’. Here, she pushes herself even harder to produce a dazzling musical grab-bag filled with flamenco, reggaetón, left-field pop, glitchy R&B, a smart Burial sample, hooks that sound like playground chants and one song, ‘Genís’, best described as ‘despondent gospel’.
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MOTOMAMI as a whole is definitely a tense listening experience. The delicate and seductive “Hentai,” co-written and produced by Rosalia and Pharrell Williams, starts as a stripped-down glide before bursting into life with a barrage of lightning-fast rhythms. When ‘Cuuuuuuuuute’ abruptly goes from clattering cyberpunk to piano balladry and back again, it’s perplexing and sort of wonderful. It’s made even more thrilling by sex-centric lyrics, including a line that translates into English as: “I want to ride you like I ride my bike”. One of the two songs Rosalía co-wrote with James Blake, “Diablo,” layers her pitch-shifted vocals with a menacing electronica and an off-kilter reggaeton beat. It implies that Rosalía will succeed if she ever wants to soundtrack an independent horror movie.
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There are also a few tracks that are more conventional, such as the Bachata gem “La Fama,” which pairs The Weeknd and Rosalía. She claims that Patti Smith served as some inspiration for the songs that dwell on the negative aspects of fame. However, even when her goals are high, “MOTOMAMI” never comes across as conceited or po-faced. The joyful reggaetón romp “Chicken Teriyaki” has her roaming around New York City while namedropping Julio Iglesias, Naomi Campbell, and hip-hop producer Mike Dean. The whole album overall it’s frequently a lot of fun. Rosalía rhymes the name of the latter with “drag queen,” which is a serve by any measure.
In reality, ‘MOTOMAMI’ as a whole we may regard to be similar. Although, Rosalía is not so much forging her own path as she is constructing her own ultra-modern, chaotically curved sonic expressway. You’ll want to take it repeatedly and rush down it. Let us know your thoughts on the album in the comments below. Lastly, for more album reviews, check out our Drake – Honestly Nevermind, Album Review.
