Kali Uchis has played many different women in her 29 years on Earth.
In the lead-up to her 2018 debut, “Isolation,” the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter made a name for herself as an avant-garde soulstress who could rock out to Bootsy Collins, Damon Albarn and Juanes, in both English and Spanish, without losing herself. a heartbeat.
In her 2020 follow-up, “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otro Demonios),” her first primarily Spanish-language LP, Uchis played a cosmic siren who assumed her star power with her colossal hit, “Telepathy.” On her 2023 album, “Red Moon in Venus,” she evolved into a sage of love, letting karma take control on enlightened R&B ballads like “I Wish You Roses” and “Moral Conscience.”
With her new Spanish album, “Orquídeas,” available this week on Geffen Records, Uchis humanizes the divine feminine avatar she has developed in her previous works. With eye-catching cameos from Karol G, Peso Pluma, Rauw Alejandro, El Alfa and City Girls' JT, she blooms wildly.
The last time I saw Uchis was on a mid-September night in Los Angeles, where she gave an intimate live performance at the Grammy Museum. The star demurely emerged from her dressing room and she took the stage, not in her usual finery, but in a long tiered yellow dress. Photos were strictly prohibited, as was the typical gathering after the show. She sang a slow, jazzy version of Nancy Sinatra's 1966 classic, “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” before slipping quietly backstage.
Months later, she reveals to me over the phone that this year she will play a new role: that of mother.
“I thought I was getting a little braver than usual,” he says, laughing. “But motherhood is definitely something I've always wanted to experience. I feel prepared for it. I have done a lot of self-healing over the last year. I sobered up. I decided to cleanse myself spiritually, mentally… and well, that's when I got pregnant.”
Uchis made the discovery shortly before embarking on the second leg of his Red Moon on Venus tour in late September. Her first concern, she says, was the possibility of having to cancel those shows and disappoint her fans, whom she affectionately calls “Kuchis.” She was also concerned about sacrificing her hard-earned privacy, made more evident by her low presence on social media.
He decided to continue the tour, which culminated in a majestic grand finale at the Hollywood Bowl. And with the support of her boyfriend, Houston-born rapper Don Toliver, he kept her pregnancy a secret for months; The couple made a joint announcement Thursday morning in the video for their brilliant bolero-pop ballad, “Tu Corazón es Mío,” and her energetic companion, “Diosa.”
“We always talked about wanting to have a child, so we were very happy,” she says. “[But] I didn't want to share that journey with anyone. There are so many people out there, even within my own family, who don't wish me well. I didn't want anyone to know until I felt my pregnancy was viable. Ask any pregnant woman. [why] They would want to keep it private. “It is a very vulnerable situation.”
Kali Uchis was born Karly-Marina Loaiza in Alexandria, Virginia. She spent her early childhood in her father's hometown of Pereira, Colombia, where she studied reading and writing in Spanish and learned spiritual practices from her grandmother, a shaman. Her family eventually settled in Virginia, where as a teenager she spent her free time playing saxophone in her high school's jazz band and producing her first songs on a laptop. Her father, who worked as a building superintendent, bought a tape recorder to keep track of repairs; Kali used it to record herself singing song sketches.
But love was scarce in their family home and conflicts were frequent.
“I have mother and father wounds that I am working on in therapy,” he says. “I'm learning to focus my idea of what family is. It is very important to heal as much as you can before bringing a child into the world, so as not to unconsciously put your shit on them.”
Uchis left home at the age of 17 and decided to pursue a musical career. In 2012 he uploaded his DIY mixtape, “Drunken Babble,” to the hip-hop audio platform DatPiff; and in 2015, he released “Por Vida,” an EP of psychedelic doo-wop fusions, with blog-era titans Kaytranada, BadBadNotGood and Tyler, the Creator. Kali eventually signed to Virgin EMI Records, a UK-based subsidiary of Universal Music, and released “Isolation” in association with London label Rinse in 2018.
However, the subterranean tension between her Colombian and American identities would haunt her professionally. It was while she was writing “Sin Miedo” that the boundaries of the music industry began to alter her creative flow, and acting as her natural Spanglish self began to feel like she was stepping on too many toes.
Although Universal has its own Latin division, the two operate separately; And he discovered that, under Uchis' contract, only songs recorded in English counted toward his contractual obligations. (She and her lawyer would later renegotiate the terms.)
“Moving between languages and being such a versatile artist in general can be really exhausting,” Uchis says, echoing the cries of many other “200 percenters,” or American-born Latinos pressured to divide their personalities along cultural lines. “It feels like working overtime.”
Although the stark division of the music industry between the English-speaking and Spanish markets has not stopped artists like Shakira or Ricky Martin from achieving global stardom, it still places a huge burden on Latinos to record twice as much material to appease music consumers. speaks english. Despite Uchis's ability to move seamlessly between languages and genres on the same song, tapping into multiple markets in the process, she says that until recently, her talents were dismissed as too “niche” to sell.
“To bring 'Telepathy' to Latin radio, [the label] They told me I would have to use different drums,” he recalls. “I told him no and the radio still picked it up. That means a lot to me, because it means I can open doors for others and expand what it means to make popular music today. Our music can extend beyond the niche.”
(Photographic illustration by Diana Ramírez/De Los)
The music industry's systemic bias may be a burden, but it hasn't completely stopped Uchis on his path to fame. Compared to most young artists of Latin American descent, he performs extremely well in both markets: his 2017 collaboration with Juanes earned him a coveted nomination at the 2018 Latin Grammys, and in 2021, his single “10%,” a 2019 collaboration with Kaytranada. , earned him the Grammy for dance recording. “Telepathy,” which she took off without a male musical accompanist, made her the first female solo artist to top Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart in nearly a decade. “Red Moon in Venus” debuted at No. 4 on the US Billboard 200 in March.
It was during the making of “Orquídeas” that Uchis decided to test his good faith in the Latin industry. “In the Latin market, this is only my second album,” he says. “To them, I'm still a new artist.”
Written at the same time as “Red Moon in Venus,” “Orchids” was recorded and arranged primarily at her home in the San Fernando Valley from 2021 to 2022. She became long-distance pen pals with some of the biggest stars and brilliant artists of Latin music, exchanging tracks. with them through emails and direct messages instead of distant studios. The process not only validated her as a Latina but also as an arbiter of her own creative destiny.
“I'm a very homely person,” he says. “I've been doing this for so long that I'm not going to be bouncing all over town anymore. I know how to fix everything myself.”
But his remote approach also produced some fabulous surprises: Take JT rapping the children's song “Sana sana, colita de rana,” over the energetic reggaeton bounce of “Muñekita.” (“I wrote the part about him in the shower,” Kali says.)
Another surprise was Peso Pluma singing happily on Uchis' disco cut, “Igual que un Ángel.”
“I sent him that song to make him laugh,” he says. “But I was very excited to do something different and it turned out well. He really did his thing!
If Uchis harbored any reluctance to release a song, he says, it was his sizzling 2023 pop-reggaeton “Labios Mordidos,” a brazen affirmation of his bisexuality.
“I've never had a song where I'm talking completely about girls in Spanish, so this was the perfect moment for me,” he says. “Growing up Latina and bisexual, I never saw that represented. “I try to be the person I would have liked to see when I was a child.”
Uchis says he presented the song to Colombian superstar Karol G, a vocal LGBTQ+ ally, in 2021, but admits he braced himself for a homophobic backlash. The two postponed it until 2023, when the climate in the Latin sphere became much more favorable for women who openly love women in reggaeton. With the arrival of queer artists like Tokischa, Young Miko, and Villano Antillano, the industry seemed ready for a song like “Labios Mordidos,” which includes lines like “Tonight I'm a lesbian / You give me the desire.”
The music video, which was filmed in suburban Miami, follows a bacchanalian house party from the year 2000, inspired by Pharrell's 2003 video for “Frontin'.” There, Uchis and Karol are surrounded by beautiful women who kiss, rub, skateboard, and, with a nod to Christina Aguilera's 2002 sex-positive anthem “Dirrty,” box each other in an underground ring. “That tattoo on my back left me breathless,” Karol purrs.
“I wanted to do something fun and feminine,” Uchis says. “We just celebrate Latinas, we celebrate women. “Just going in there with it and getting kind of nasty and weird with it.”
However, as she predicted, much of her fans' praise was interspersed with hostility, specifically against women who exercise their sexual agency, enthusiastically and independently of men.
(Photographic illustration by Diana Ramirez/De Los; Photos by Amaury Nessaibia)
“My fan base loves that,” Uchis says. “But introducing this to a broader audience meant seeing things like, 'Ew. So vulgar. Why do women sing like that about women? Now, when a man sings like that about women, it's okay. For example, there are many popular Latin songs about girls who are with older men. So you're okay with fixing the girls? And pedophilia? But when a girl sings about another girl, is that where we've crossed the line in this community?
“That's why I really appreciate that Karol ended up choosing 'Labios Mordidos,'” Uchis adds. “She is a great artist worldwide, but especially in Latin America. “There is a lot of risk in making a song like that.”
Uchis already has a follow-up album to “Orquideas” in the works, which she describes as a slower exploration of her “emo side.” Not My Chemical Romance kind of emo, she emphasizes; but moody currents of alternative rock are to be expected. And as with any Kali Uchis album, she promises to continue breaking industry standards and forging new paths for Latinas in music.
“I try to remind myself that I am much stronger than the people who set out to tear me down. That is the most important”.
