hey fellow kuchis, happy orquídeas release week! I was so lucky to get a copy of this beautiful album a few days early and wanted to show you guys the pics i took
and yeah it is absolutely up there with Isolation.
not gonna spoil anything but I should mention my faves are tu corazón es mio, igual que un ángel, ¿como así? and dame beso // muévete
hey fellow kuchis, happy orquídeas release week! I was so lucky to get a copy of this beautiful album a few days early and wanted to show you guys the pics i took
and yeah it is absolutely up there with Isolation.
not gonna spoil anything but I should mention my faves are tu corazón es mio, igual que un ángel, ¿como así? and dame beso // muévete
hey fellow kuchis, happy orquídeas release week! I was so lucky to get a copy of this beautiful album a few days early and wanted to show you guys the pics i took
and yeah it is absolutely up there with Isolation.
not gonna spoil anything but I should mention my faves are tu corazón es mio, igual que un ángel, ¿como así? and dame beso // muévete
literally no one wants that, so I guess the actuality of this never happening won't hurt as much as her other cancelled albums. the only reason BWET is still held up to this day was because it was recorded while she was in her prime...
new interview! https://www.vulture.com/article/kali-uchis-orquideas-interview.html
For more than a decade, Kali Uchis has leaped across the Latin soul-music world in search of that elusive element of generational pop called “timeliness.” She grew up bopping between her hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, and her ancestral barrio in Pereira, Colombia, absorbing diasporic sounds: the bolero pining of trovadores like La Lupe, the supple harmonies of Cuban doo-woppers like Los Zafiros, and brash rap lightning bugs like Missy Elliott and N.E.R.D. At 17, Uchis was producing beats out of a hooptie instead of attending class. That, along with her Por Vida EP three years later, put her on the radar of Snoop Dogg and Tyler, the Creator (the latter collaborated with her on her first hit, “After the Storm,” from her debut album, 2018’s Isolation). The 29-year-old’s first Spanish-language album, 2020’s Sin Miedo, delivered her biggest hit yet, “telepatía,” a horny letter to a lover. It has reached over a billion Spotify streams, making Uchis the first female Latin artist to achieve that benchmark. Its success was clarifying. She grew more confident steering her career the way she envisions it as a bilingual artist, making a second album in Spanish, Orquídeas, out this month. It’s a path that has always come with some risk. “I learned early on,” she said, “that not fitting into one box is always going to make you more difficult for other people to sell.”
Did you know you were going to make another Spanish-language album?
Yes. I was working on Orquídeas at the same time I was working on my 2023 album, Red Moon in Venus. So some of these songs are from early 2021. I have so much to express when it comes to not just the different languages but also the genres. This is probably the most cohesive and sonically solid album I’ve ever made. I was able to do that because I had so many other places to put all of these other things that are inside me: Red Moon in Venus was very down-tempo and soulful. Orquídeas is my up-tempo album. It has an eerie yet still classic, feminine, luxurious quality.
You surprise us with this one. Two of the singles, “Te Mata” and “Muñekita,” dabble in classic bolero, reggaeton, and dembow. They are very different from the rest of the album, which is much more based in dance music.
Sin Miedo was similar in that way. It had a bolero single, but it was not a bolero album. There’s another song on the new album, “Dame Beso // Muévete,” that is a traditional Latin-sounding song, whereas the rest of the album feels a lot fresher. I’m so inspired by old singers, and beyond anything, I love to make music that can be considered timeless. I’m fascinated by the fact that I could listen to music from the ’50s or ’60s and it could still resonate with me in 2024.
You had me going back to listen to La Lupe. Now I can pinpoint things both of you are doing in your own ways. The amount of musical lineage that gets passed down feels special.
It’s always fun to pay tribute to people who pave the way in music culturally, especially when I’m making an album in Spanish. So much of what I do in my work in Latin music is based around expanding and giving insight into the types of music I listened to growing up in Colombia. When people think of a Latin artist, they think of one particular sound, when actually it’s so many genres. That’s a big part of what I want to showcase when I make an album in Spanish.
Are there specific challenges to making Latin music compared with the English stuff?
Creatively, I wouldn’t say there are challenges. It’s fun for me to write music in Spanglish. I grew up reading and writing in Spanish before English. I went to school in Colombia for years and then I came back and went to school in the United States. I had the bicultural experience, and it’s deeply embedded in my writing process. The biggest challenge is not creative; it’s when marketing and capitalism come into play. The question is always “Where are you from, Colombia or America?” I’m a dual citizen. “Dual citizen, okay, but what genre are you doing? What language do you speak?” It’s hard for people to wrap their head around it. For instance, this is my fourth album, but in a way, it is my second album because it’s only my second Latin album. So many people still have no idea who I am in the Latin space even more than in the Anglo market. That is the challenging part of it.
Your first label didn’t see your vision for Sin Miedo. Was the second Spanish album an easier sell?
Definitely. Sin Miedo was my first album fully in Spanish. I had a song in Spanish on Isolation, but they felt it didn’t do well on the album. They were like, “Nobody knows you in that space, and you’re already doing well with this other sound. You have ‘After the Storm.’ ” That was my hit on Isolation. To them, it’s like, “Why are you going off and creating another path when you were already on this uphill trek in one direction?” From a business perspective, it makes sense.
I was signed in the U.K., and for them, Latin music was even more taboo, especially at that time. We think everybody knows who Selena is, but a lot of people in London don’t even know her. So Spanish-speaking music was really hard to cross over into Europe. When I was making Sin Miedo, it wasn’t a popular thing to do the way it is right now. It’s gotten a lot more mainstream.
All of that was a factor for why they said, “You’re on your own. You’re not going to get any support. We’re not going to promote it.” For me, that didn’t really matter because Isolation wasn’t a commercial album either; it was a critically acclaimed album. I never cared about first-week sales. I didn’t have promotion. I was never this artist who was thrown down people’s throats and promoted everywhere. I had my niche fan base. That word was often thrown around in label meetings — niche, niche, niche. It was like, You’re going to do your thing. That’s cute you made your little thing for yourself.
So condescending.
I don’t think anybody saw me as someone able to sell my music or myself as an artist. I don’t think they saw the vision. So I honestly wasn’t concerned. I was just like, Oh well, you guys aren’t supporting what I do anyway.
Fair enough.
That’s not why I started creating music. It’s the ultimate luxury to be able to wake up and do what makes you happy. That’s the main reason I chose to do this with my life. I am not an artist because I wanted to be famous or superrich. So it didn’t bother me when they said that. God made me what he made me. I am bilingual. These are all the sides of me. I’m not going to only show one tiny part of myself when there’s this vast scope of creativity within me. So I just went for it. With this album, it is a different situation because we’re with Interscope Geffen now. In general, they’re just more supportive. And then, of course, after the success of “telepatía,” which ended up being my most globally commercial song ever, who was going to tell me “no”?
I’m curious what it’s like for you as a Latin American artist working in a space with a lot of Latin artists from outside the United States. How do you see yourself as part of the broader global Latin music scene as you’re moving more toward making Spanish-language music? Do you ever feel out of place? Or do you feel you’re fully embraced in that space?
Probably the most disheartening and embarrassing moment for me was not being acknowledged at all by the Latin Grammys when “telepatía” came out. I don’t know the real reason why people acknowledge or don’t acknowledge certain artists. They’re still looking at me like I’m a new artist when I’ve been doing my thing for a long time. They don’t know. I worked with Karol G recently. It put eyes on me for certain people that might not necessarily be my demographic. They’re like, Oh, why is she working with this girl that don’t even have Latin music, don’t even have Billboard awards, and don’t even have a Grammy? It’s like, You naming all the things that I have! A clear Google check would’ve let you know. Certain people don’t put respect on your name. They don’t realize there’s a whole world outside of the music they listen to. And I have built so much of my career outside of Latin music. So I wouldn’t say it is a feeling of like, Oh, I fit right in. I have never fit in any space in this industry. But that’s a part of why I do what I do. I want to inspire other artists to feel like they can take a space being whoever they want to be. They don’t have to confine themselves.
There are younger Latinx artists, like Ambar Lucid, who view you as a blueprint for their own career. Do you feel like you’re carving out a space that wasn’t there before or that hadn’t been opened in a long time?
Yeah, I mean, when I was coming up, I never heard anyone singing bilingual. Shakira is probably the only person who would make English and Spanish albums. But hers was a different situation because she would make the exact same song that was in Spanish in English. So it wasn’t like she was carving out an entirely different world in English and another one in Spanish. What I’m doing is very different from that. I never saw anybody do what I do, and that’s what made me want to do it more than anything. I don’t mean to say these bitches is my sons, but —
Sometimes you gotta own it!
Put ’em in the car seat! I saw a lot of people doing Spanglish after Sin Miedo happened. I’ve even seen Latin artists trying to incorporate more Spanglish into their music. A lot of Spanish artists who do music solely in Spanish — who are English speakers — have come to me and been like, “Wow, I really want to make music in English, but I never have because my label doesn’t want me to.” Of course, the same way they didn’t want me to do that, they don’t want other people to do the reverse.
How did your world change with “telepatía”?
It broke records in a way I had never experienced. Who knows if I’ll ever have that again. But to experience that once in my lifetime of being an artist — being from where I come from and having had the odds stacked against me — it makes me feel really good. When they wanted to push it to radio, they said, “This can only go to radio if you change the drums,” because there was nothing on Latin radio, especially at that time, that had that sound. I was just like, “No, it’s fine, radio doesn’t have to take it then.” I didn’t change the music, and radio ended up taking it anyway. It’s a song I didn’t compromise on, and it was able to do what it did. It wasn’t a single; it didn’t have a music video; it wasn’t being pushed. It did it completely on its own just because it was able to touch people all over the world.
It’s interesting how that song really popped on TikTok. You seem like a very private person, but does that push you to be more open on social media at all?
I don’t like to be on the internet too much, but I made myself because I was like, Nobody’s promoting me. I had to get on Twitter and this and that. I’m 29. We didn’t have social media when I was a kid. I remember when Facebook and Twitter first started. I feel blessed I’ve been able to separate reality from the internet because there’s so many people that aren’t able to do that. I genuinely feel like there are so many kids these days whose sole goal in life is to be famous.
Some scary shit.
Whoever likes to do that, no shame to them. But I don’t understand the pressure from labels, which want us to be influencers, too. That is a separate job. People on the internet show luxurious things or a certain lifestyle they don’t really live, and they think that’s doing something good for them. But in reality, it’s putting so much evil on you. What are you trying to give yourself that attention for? I don’t know. To me, it’s a trap and a form of validation that doesn’t serve your spirit and will never make you feel fulfilled.
One image that kept coming up for me while listening to your music was this trinity of the Devil, the angel, and God. You’ve used them in such different ways. You’ve embodied them yourself and seen them in others. I wonder about the utility of those images for you. Why do you return to them?
That’s where my mind always goes when it comes to classic imagery. Sometimes we end up seeing the world in a very black-and-white way when really there’s a balance. Not everybody is all good or all bad, and there are so many different sides to every person. To be able to play with that type of imagery feels powerful and timeless, like something everybody can really understand.
Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?
I consider myself more spiritual than anything. As a kid, I always knew I felt happiest out in the sun and lying in the grass. And that was when I felt closest to God. I don’t focus on which book or which teachings or which anything. When it came to religion, my house growing up had the Bible, the Quran, Hindu stuff, Buddhist books — all those different teachings. I realized they all share the same core values, a general underlying element of, Live your life by some principle, some type of moral compass, while understanding there is evil out there. There is evil that wants to control your life or tempt you or take your spirit. But what’s most important over anything — over money, over being successful, over accolades — is your soul.
Born Again (Final) - this one is amazing
Crash - produced by Imanbek, big bop but sounds unfinished
Many a Man - trash ballad, this one was on the Call On Me album
Walk Away - also from the OG album, this one has a sample but i forgot what it is
Worth It demo - cute!
Regarding the latest version of the album (because lord knows how many albums she actually cut during her 7 years) before she left Polydor is that it was supposed to drop in 2021 and "Call On Me" was the lead before she went AWOL after it underperformed. Songs that were intended to be on the album were played on her infamous June 2021 instagram live which included
- Born Again
- Fantastic
- The Thrill is Gone (Demo)
- Buss It Down
+ Call on Me
These were the only "confirmed" tracks by Raye but as we know, lots of album sessions leaked in the following years.
An album cover was also shot for said album but has yet to leak.
I made an album comp with the best sessions (imo) and it's honestly a very solid dance pop record with lots of songs that should've seen the light of day.
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