Queen Of The Global Night Club

Rosalia found stardom by doing something very specific: updating flamenco for the digital age. But with a new album full of genre-melting, party-starting hits, the Spanish singer is ready to show Just how expansive her music can be.

- Laia Garcia-furtado

¿Chica, que dices?

The question-Girl, what you sayin'?-opens Motomami, the Spanish pop star Rosalía's latest album, released in March. It is a simple question but also a freighted one. After all, no one, least of all Rosalía, could have foreseen that a Spanish-language record that she conceived and produced independently as part of her college thesis project, 2018's El Mal Querer, would catapult her to global success. But Rosalía's one-of-one blending of flamenco with modern sounds enraptured listeners and synced up with what some called the second Latin explosion, after the late-'90s moment when artists like Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, and Enrique Iglesias broke into American pop with English-language hits. The difference was that Rosalía, along with peers like Bad Bunny, J Balvin, and Luis Fonsi, sang in her native Spanish, refusing to court success on any single market's terms. From there, she released a string of singles some with flamenco flourishes, some not-with several of the biggest names in reggaeton and urbano music, along with the likes of Travis Scott, The Weeknd, and Billie Eilish. In the process, Rosalía became a Spanish-language sensation and also a pioneer of music built for the global nightclub.

And so, hidden inside that simple question are a few more complicated ones: When you reach the highest tier of pop-when you have everyone on earth ready to move the way you tell them to-what do you do? How do you surpass the work of art that changed your life forever? Do you return to what got you there? Or do you push forward into something entirely new? ¿Rosalía, qué dices?