Puerto Rican iLe finds herself on her third album,

New York, Oct 21 (EFE).- The Puerto Rican singer iLe presents her third studio album this Friday, “Nacarile”, a collection of eleven songs with remarkable collaborations in which she allows herself to be guided by music, shares her vulnerability and finds herself, she told EFE.

This more melodic and experimental work has already been previewed in “Where No One Else Breathes”, about the political consequences of colonialism in Puerto Rico; “En Cantos”, where she focuses on love in a duet with the Mexican Natalia Lafourcade; or “(Escaping) from me”, a story of overcoming.

Hours before premiering her new work at an intimate concert in Brooklyn (New York), the former member of the group Calle 13 and Grammy winner for her first solo album, “iLevitable”, highlighted how the pandemic plunged her into a moment of confusion from which he learned an apprenticeship.

“I was very affected by what was happening around me and added the uncertainty that we lived at that time, the way we see and appreciate life… That complexity of battling with myself, between wanting to be focused on the album and not knowing how ”, Said the 33-year-old also a composer.

It was at that moment of feeling “dispersed, lost and confused” when music became a “therapy” for the artist – whose real name is Ileana Cabra – who decided to “welcome that discomfort and give it love, recognize that it is there and accept it to go on and transcend it.”

MUSIC LEADS THE WAY

Hence, the chosen title is “nacarile”, a flat denial in the colloquial language of the island: “It matched what I was feeling when making the album, the songs express that moment of difficulty and discomfort. Nacarile was my way of transcending those adversities”, she comments.

“I feel that the songs guided me: on previous albums I have a clear direction, but this time it was the other way around,” explains the singer, who remembers herself as a “floating” being in the creative process and reflects it in her sound. with a “suspended texture and musicality”.

“I enjoyed it, I felt that I wanted to give more space to breathing, to the air that is in the voice, to play with different instrumentations where I could reflect how I felt: as if I were not stepping on anything, but in the air,” he adds.

Maintaining the vindictive spirit that loads her lyrics with feminist arguments, the singer addresses the subject of love and as a result of this she also decides to “let go” of a more personal side that she has not shown as much until now because, she admits, it is difficult for her to stop and do introspection.

“The other albums had a little more of a collective (soul), which is important, but on this one (I try to) understand myself a little better,” details the composer, who points out that facing “those things that perhaps scare you express about yourself” is like “you understand yourself better”.

A “TREMENDOUS TEAM”

Part of that discomfort that iLe learned in her new job was through making several collaborations, which she initially describes as a “vulnerable process of sharing your song with another person who you don’t know if they will see it in the same way or feel identified”.

However, the fact of being accompanied in more than half of the songs indicates that this process was positive, and she corroborates it: “I am very excited, it was a new experience for me, I never imagined that I would have so many collaborations and everything gave very harmoniously.”

Among the “tremendous team” of artists is the queen of reggaeton, Ivy Queen, her ally against patriarchy in the lyrics of “Something Beautiful”, which encourage “breaking stereotypes and redefining them, because we have an important place in this world and we continue to battle inequality.”

“It’s important to reclaim all the things that belong to us as women and continue to expand the conversation in the women’s movement,” she adds.

“Nacarile” also features the voices of the Mexicans Flor de Toloache and Natalia Lafourcade, and the Chilean Mon Laferte, as well as the Argentine rapper Trueno and the Spanish singer Rodrigo Cuevas, who add nuances to the album’s eclecticism.

Nora Quintanilla

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Puerto Rican iLe finds herself on her third album,