Rosalia brings together the duality of women in “Motomami”

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The inspirations for Rosalia's album “Motomami” were as varied as the songs it includes, from flamenco and bolero to dembow, reggaeton and ballad, and even a recording by her grandmother, “the original Motomami” according to the artist. The constant for this production released on Friday was the dedication and sacrifice it entailed for it over the course of three years.

Rosalia began working on “Motomami”, her third and much-anticipated album after “El mal querer” that led her to win the Grammy and seven Latin Grammys, while she was in the middle of her tour in 2019. When the pandemic broke out, he decided to stay in the United States to continue working in it, even though this meant being thousands of miles away from his family.

“It was a big sacrifice. I've never really been this far from my family,” Rosalia said Monday at a press conference in Mexico City. “Often this context, the context of this industry, can be hostile and there is nothing that comforts me more than constantly returning to where I am, going back to my people. Throughout this whole project, most of the time, it has been far from all that and that is a big sacrifice and that has been very hard for me, but I did it and I would do it again because at least the album is finished”.

Rosalia described the 16-song album, which includes the singles “Chicken Teriyaki”, “La combi Versace” with Tokischa and “La fama” with The Weeknd, as “an energy”.

The title, he explained, represents the duality of our maternal side and our tougher side.

“Motorcycle in Japanese means tougher. Mommy is the figure of the mother, women as a power of creation, as a creative force,” he said.

Feeling that longing for his loved ones, and trying to portray that duality, he included a recording of the voice of his grandmother, who speaks in Catalan precisely about the importance of family.

“It was a WhatsApp message that my grandmother sent me,” she said. “I said, why shouldn't I put my grandmother if my grandmother is the original 'motomami'? And my mother too, my mother is a very big inspiration to me, my mother is a 'motomami' from head to toe. When I was little he took me on Harley (motorcycle), I was dressed in black 'leather'. He was wearing his black leather vest, he went with his boots, with his blonde, curly hair.”

On the cover of “Motomami”, Rosalia appears naked with a motorcycle helmet and the title of the album written as graffiti. As in Botticelli's “The Birth of Venus”, which he cited as inspiration, he covers the breasts with one arm and the genital area with the other.

In his songs there are many other figures as references: the rocker Patti Smith, the poet Ocean Vuong, the salsa man Hector Lavoe and the flamenco Camarón de la Isla, to which he added veteran reggaetoneros such as Don Omar, Yandel and Daddy Yankee.

On a sound level, he created a palette with an emphasis on percussions, without strings and with many synthesizers. But it is still a very autobiographical experiment for Rosalía, who tried to make a snapshot of a moment in her life when she went from being surrounded by people to being in isolation due to the pandemic, from complete exposure to disappearing from the public eye.

“It might seem that the 'tracklist' when you hear it, as if there is a lot going up and down, as if it were chaos, but it's not at all. It's an orderly chaos,” Rosalia said. “For me, there is a divine order in people's destiny. When you're watching someone else's life it may seem like chaos, but to me it's completely orderly chaos and the tracklist is done that way, looking for that feeling.”

Rosalía said that she did not make dozens of songs to discard and make up the album, but she was always clear about which ones she wanted to work and she produced them with extreme meticulousness, during long sessions in the studio. In the end some songs had six or eight different versions, but he didn't stop until he found the perfect one.

“It hasn't been easy, it's been the album to date that I've had to fight the most, with blood, sweat and tears, a lot of dedication,” he admitted. “I'm glad I didn't throw in the towel.”

The song list for “Motomami”, released by Columbia Records, includes the bolero “Delirio de grandeur”; “Biscuit”, which is for dancing, and “Hentai”, an overtly sexual song that recently caused a stir with just a few seconds advance.

“I thought we were over this, that we were already somewhere else, but it clearly makes me want to keep writing around,” Rosalía said of “Hentai”, which in Japanese is a word to describe anime and sexual manga. “That for me makes it more evident that women are still expected to be feminine and that's it. And, on the other hand, I refuse that. I am many more things and among them feminine”.