This fall, Durango-born rookie ElArturo delivered one of the poppiest productions in the tumbado canon with Y Qu é. In a few short years, corrido tumbado stars Natanael Cano and La Plebada have sparked heated debates between Mexican regional music traditionalists and a visionary generation of artists eager to experiment and innovate on their roots. She tests her belting power on songs such as “Perdido” and the Mon Laferte-assisted “Pensamos,” making Parte De Mí a showcase of how multi-faceted she can get. Since bursting out of Argentina’s music scene a few years ago, Nicki Nicole has been light on her feet and flexible over nearly any kind of beat, but she’s more elastic than ever here. One of the highlights on Nicki Nicole’s versatile debut Parte De Mí is the piano-led opener and title track, which offers off a new side of her voice: She’s fragile, exposed, and heart-shatteringly vulnerable, channeling the spirit of Soundcloud-era Billie Eilish. Grammy-nominated Lido Pimienta adds haunting vocals on the standout “Tiempo Ahora,” a sprawling track that seems engineered to help listeners imagine possible new shapes for a broken world. Speech samples interspersed among the album’s tracks connect struggles for liberation from past generations to today, spotlighting the seemingly endless project of fighting for freedom. The Nicaraguan-Canadian artist explores time in moments of effervescent beats, time in moments of expansive stillness, time in centuries of violent oppression and resistance. T he first track on Máscaras is called “Momento Presente,” a title that aptly foreshadows one of this stunning album’s major feats: a thorough examination of time. With his debut album, The Good Trip, featuring assists from artists such as Eladio Carrión, Amenazzy, and Noriel, Big Soto establishes himself firmly at the front of the pack. Soto’s impeccable flow is no exception - and it’s where he really shines - but he’s not shy about singing either. The Venezuelan rap scene’s commitment to battle rap as a way to come up means the country’s rappers can spit.
Part of a crop of Venezuelan rappers who have shed their predecessors’ commitment to boom-bap conscious joints, Big Soto is from a generation of young artists who are making music that is rooted in their local style and still keeps things innovative. Both albums shaped an adventurous year that left us hopeful for more music with a vision. Tangana’s stunning, avant-garde opus El Madrileño, which is likely to stand up as one of the best Spanish-language musical recordings of the last decade, and Rauw Alejandro’s intrepid blockbuster Vice Versa, a daredevil’s blend of pop, house, and even bolero music that rocked commercial pop and reggaeton conventions, spawned off mega-hits like “Todo De Ti” that defined the summer, and blasted him into global stardom. The two albums that perhaps best embodied 2021’s wayfaring sonic experiments were C. Entusiasmo, celebrated the euphoria of hitting the dancefloor again after lockdown. Others, such as the honey-voiced Panamanian singer Sech on 42 and the Chilean indie icon Javiera Mena on I. There were albums guided by introspection and depth, such as the Colombian multi-hyphenate Mabiland’s gorgeous LP Niñxs Rotxs, the Mexican singer-songwriter Ed Maverick’s self-reflective Eduardo, and the Nicaraguan-Canadian electronic artist Mas Aya’s Máscaras, a meditation on people fighting oppression over the decades. The Colombian bullerengue treasure Petrona Martinez put African roots front and center on her Latin Grammy-winning Ancestras, while the Mexican singer Natalia Lafourcade continued her quest to bring Mexico’s musical history into the present day on Un Canto Por México, Vol 2. Such a sense of enthusiasm and inventiveness led to wide-ranging projects, many of which distilled traditions, broke genre rules, and landed powerful fusions that pushed unflinchingly into the future. After we spent most of last year confined at home during a crushing pandemic, artists across the Spanish-speaking world approached 2021 with a voracious sense of creativity, their imaginations gushing out with the force of a burst pipe.
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