Rosalía’s third album, Motomami, is a tour de force of genre hybridization. Throughout, the Spanish artist employs the sounds of reggaeton, R&B, flamenco, hyperpop, and hip-hop, among others, to create a collection of deeply personal songs in which she wrestles with questions of transformation, fame, and heartbreak.
Though it boasts a sonic identity all its own, Motomami develops the sounds of both Rosalía’s 2017 debut, the flamenco-infused Los Ángeles, and 2018’s more experimental, synth-heavy El Mal Querer in daring and inventive ways. The album strikes a delicate balance between aggressive uptempo bangers and more emotionally wrought ballads.
On Motomami’s more confrontational tracks, Rosalía dabbles with the abrasive sounds characteristic of PC Music artists like Sophie and Charli XCX. The undeniably catchy “Chicken Teryaki” fuses reggaeton with harsh subterranean bass, while Rosalía delivers an upper cut with each braggadocious syllable. But tracks like this one and “Saoko” belie the singer’s introspective and even melancholy lyrical focus: The latter, for one, finds Rosalía confronting the changes that she’s undergone in the past several years since her rise to fame, reveling in their contradictions and possibilities.
The album also gestures toward the past, specifically Rosalía’s own, as on the stripped-down “Bulerías,” where her powerful vibrato and vocal runs are accompanied by little more than faint percussion and chants. “Bulerías” is perhaps the subtlest example of Rosalía’s ability to envision the future via fragments of her personal and musical past. The track displays an instrumental subtlety amid the rest of the album’s more maximalist grandeur.
Occasionally, Motomami’s upbeat tracks blend into one another, as they lack distinct sonic identities. “La Fama” is a dark, almost disturbing meditation on the pitfalls of fame, and guest artist the Weeknd would seem right at home on such a song, but his vocals don’t possess Rosalía’s dynamism or emotional range, adding very little to the track.
The album’s slower songs recall the sensuality and emotional intensity of El Mal Querer, and their placement butts up against the more experimental tracks, with all their sonic and lyrical quirks. The stunning “Hentai” evokes the most ingratiating slow jams of the 2000s, while “G3 N15” and “Como un G” combine emotional introspection with slow-burning hooks.
The album’s second track, “Candy,” melds Rosalía’s two artistic impulses together most effectively: The beat hints at aggression, but the soft, sparkly synths and the singer’s breathy vocals match the song’s explorations of heartbreak. Though the lyrics suggest that Rosalía has moved on from a lover, the syrupy melancholy of the music suggests that the lingering wounds are still quite raw. For her, the past lingers on in the present.
In taking bits and fragments from both her previous work and that of her contemporaries, Rosalía has fashioned an album rife with the contradictory sounds, lyrical themes, and artistic impulses of the past and present. Motomami’s cover art provides an apt visual summation of the album’s, and Rosalía’s, attitude toward its audience—acknowledging that she’s at once exposed yet enveloped by an air of mystery and danger that demands our attention.
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