Press release
Puerto Rican star Ileana “iLe” Cabra has released the new music video “Lo Que Yo Quería.” The video was directed by Juanky Alvarez. The song is from iLe’s critically-acclaimed third album ‘Nacarile.’
“‘Lo Que Yo Queria’ is a song about the process of someone who went through a long pattern of ‘gaslighting’ during a relationship,” iLe shares. “It’s about how scary it can be when you realize that something that seemed like love was actually a desperate and violent need of control.”
Two years ago, iLe found herself adrift, floating in an emotional abyss. The COVID-19 pandemic had just begun to radically transform the planet, and a sense of perpetual uncertainty weighed heavy on her. Those first months of quarantine warped time and space, twisting the days into a ceaseless, indistinguishable drag. iLe turned to music, seeking some form of respite. “I felt like I was in this state of emotional madness: confused, lost,” she says. She wanted to use her meticulous creative approach to embark on a new album, but life had other plans for her.
So she tried something else: she let go. “I had to let myself go without knowing what I was going to do or write,” she says. “I was confused and lost, but at the same time, songs kept coming out of me. I kept writing. I kept composing.”
The result is ‘Nacarile,’ an expansive 11-track project. It draws on iLe’s affinity for classic Latin American genres and Puerto Rican folk percussion, and even dabbles in the hip-hop she performed in her youth alongside her brothers in the iconic group Calle 13. But ‘Nacarile‘ also incorporates new genres, collaging astral synths, irreverent art pop, and prismatic melodies into iLe’s most imaginative, prescient project yet.
While iLe’s GRAMMY-nominated sophomore album ‘Almadura‘ drew on the rich history of Caribbean rhythms, immersing listeners in the percussive roots of bomba, salsa, and beyond, iLe’s focus was melodic experimentation this time around. Lyrically, ‘Nacarile’ explores how the personal and the political intersect. There are searing feminist protest songs and condemnations of colonization as well as experimentation with iLe returning to her interior and fighting to make sense of self-doubt and psychic turmoil.
There are moments on ‘Nacarile’ where iLe steps out of her comfort zone, like the explosive “ALGO BONITO.” For this track, iLe chose an unlikely collaborator: the reggaeton pioneer Ivy Queen. But as a militant avowal of women’s resistance, the song seamlessly links their political impulses. It inverts ubiquitous misogynistic sayings into statements of power: “Nunca he creído que callai’ta me veo mas linda,” raps Ivy at one point (“I’ve never thought that I looked prettier when I was quiet”). The chorus includes the common phrase “dime algo bonito” (“tell me something good”), but iLe flips the cliché into an expression of political urgency. “We want safe and legal abortion. Those are the good things we want to hear,” she says.
The title of the album is a play on iLe’s name and the Puerto Rican colloquialism “Nacarile del oriente,” an emphatic exclamation that roughly translates to “Not at all!” At first the title emerged as a joke, but soon iLe realized it reflected the defiant spirit of the album. “It’s about accepting those moments where you feel a little lost – embracing that, but not staying in that feeling,” she says. “It’s like saying, ‘Thank you, I learned a lot, but no. I’m not going to stay there.’”
ILE – NACARILE – USA TOUR 2023
March 3 – Washington, DC / Kennedy Center
March 4 – Somerville, MA / Center For The Arts
March 5 – New York, NY / Sony Hall
March 8 – Chicago, IL / Metro
March 11 – Los Ángeles, CA / The Miracle Theater
March 13 – San Francisco, CA / Great American Music Hall
March 15-19 – Austin, TX / SXSW
March 23 – Fort Lauderdale, FL / The Angeles
