Review Summary: "Soy todas las cosas, yo me transformo/I'm everything, I transform"
Motomami is a really schizophrenic project. Reggaeton tracks are followed by midtempo bachatas, intimate piano ballads, flamenco tracks and electronic efforts. The album's experimentation has to be applauded, as it creates an ambitious and adventurous experience, containing some of her best, in my opinion, songs in her discography to date. And despite having some underdeveloped ideas that bog the album down, it’s an exciting new chapter for an artist with unlimited potential.
The tracks that fully embrace the reggaeton and mainstream sounds that put her on international charts throughout 2019 and 2020 (see ‘Con Altura’ and ‘TKN’) are boundlessly fun, but even if Rosalia’s personality carries these songs, they are far from the stronger tracks of the album. In fact, the more quiet and delicate moments — the ones that allow her voice to sprawl — are some of the most defining moments of
Motomami. ‘HENTAI’ is genius, contrasting its sexual subject matter (
”Te quiero ride como a mi bike”/’I want to ride you like my bike” and
“Yo la bati hasta que se montó”/”I whipped it until it got stiff”) with a genuinely gorgeous, Disney-esque piano backdrop, until the aggression hidden beneath the piano erupts in the form of electronic beats. ‘SAKURA’ is an incredible closing number and in a project full of standout vocal moments, this might be her most impressive vocal work. ‘LA FAMA’, the aforementioned bachata track, is a slow-building one, but the vocals from Rosalia and The Weeknd (who sings in Spanish) and the production have so much movement that make the song a fantastic journey.
There are moments where the louder instrumentation and more experimental touches pay off as well. ‘CUUUUuuuuuute’ is a song that could have easily fitted on last year’s
KicK III by Arca, which is the highest piece of praise I can give, as the post-club and electronic sounds dominate the song, before transitioning to balladry and then back again. ‘SAOKO’ is a fantastic opener to the record with an industrial production, elements of reggaeton and even a jazz breakdown. And her voice, beautiful and sweet in some places, becomes assertive in others when the more aggressive production demands it.
Despite it being 16 tracks long, it’s a 42-minute experience, (no) thanks to the brevity of many of these tracks. That brevity results in some undercooked ideas that either fail to make an impression (‘BIZCOCHITO’) or are not very interesting to begin with (‘Abcdefg’ - which is an unnecessary interlude). Weirdly enough, some of the shorter tracks are the ones that commit to reggaeton and straightforward sounds (‘CHICKEN TERIYAKI’ and ‘LA COMBI VERSACE’ being the most notable examples) and a shorter tracklist that omits these tracks would make the album much stronger.
The narrative of her previous album,
El Mal Querer, was based on the anonymous 13th-century novel Flamenca.
Motomami, then, is not only a musical shift — from the flamenco-pop of that album to the alternative reggaeton and experimental pop of this one — but a lyrical one as well, as she offers the most honest picture of her personal life so far. During ‘SAKURA’, she likens the fame she’s received as an artist to a cherry blossom, not for its beauty, but for its ephemeral nature (
“Se una popstar nunca te dura”/”Being a popstar never lasts”). But if
Motomami proves anything, it’s that she is magnetic and multi-faceted enough to stick around. There’s humor, confidence and intimacy throughout the whole record. There’s aggression, sweetness and grandiosity and those can exist next to each other in the tracklist or even in the same song. Even though there are a handful of tracks that slow down the momentum this album builds up, there’s no denying the talents
Motomami presents.
