San Francisco-born singer-songwriter La Favi presents Adicta, her new full-length album for Promesses, Paris-based experimental label. It has been 8 years since Reír y Llorar EP, or „No Eres Bueno“ ft. Ms Nina, one of her first projects. I don’t know how many music fans remember this project, but everyone interested in alternative reggaeton should know this is a cult record. It was a very interesting time for experimental Latin American artists combining and playing with all kinds of genres and stirring the borders of reggaeton, pop, club music, and more. (You may recall our interview with Chico Sonido, for example.)
Now, La Favi is releasing her new album Adicta, and it’s an interesting pushing of her artistic direction, exploring dreamy reggaeton, pop, and darker experimental production from French producers like Brodinski or Modulaw. Let’s deep dive into the interview about the album, creative process, and growing up in Northern California.
• It’s been 8 years since the release of your EP, Reír y Llorar, which I consider a significant and my favorite work. How do you reflect on that period now, and what has changed for you as an artist since then? Has your life undergone a significant change since that time?
Ah, that is cool. Thank you 🙂 I’m happy to hear you like it. Reír Y Llorar as an EP started when I was recording covers and writing songs on random reggaeton and trap beats and putting them on YouTube, experimenting with blending the classical and the Andalusian melodies with that. I think when I listen to it now, I feel like the project represents me; maybe the writing is rougher and more pure. I had just released my first singles that I recorded in my early 20s. Deltatron, the producer of Reír y Llorar, heard them and was writing me asking me to come to the studio. We recorded it at RedBull Studios in Santa Monica. That was the beginning of me starting to work in the industry in LA.
• How are you enjoying life in San Francisco? Do you have a strong network of friends and fellow artists there with whom you can collaborate and discuss your music?
I feel very grateful to be in San Francisco because I was gone for a long time. I was born and raised mostly in San Francisco, so it feels like home, and there’s no place like home, right? San Francisco, especially for the people that’s really grown up there, is a small town where we mostly all know each other somehow. It’s a tourist city, but something many people don’t know is that the region is renowned for its beautiful nature. The water, the hills, and the outskirts. Northern California is a very beautiful place, and it is also a fucked up place. So the beauty and the pain of it shaped me, I guess.
My generation growing up, we were all mostly children of immigrants, or grandchildren, or immigrants ourselves, and that experience, growing up like that, shaped me, as well as the mix of the cultures. Musically, I started what you could say is my career here. When I was like 15/16, I started getting invited to go to studios with some local rappers that knew I could sing because I would post videos of myself on Myspace. The first producer that recorded me lived a few blocks away from me, and he was like my neighbor. This was during the hyphy movement; creativity and partying were everywhere. You could find someone freestyling or dancing or painting graffiti, or playing music literally on any corner. It’s hard to describe, but it was really like that. I wasn’t really trying to do anything; it just happened. Once my music was on the internet, I would say that’s where my network of artists and people listening to me came from. But it definitely started in San Francisco, and I reference that in my work as a songwriter and in all the art I make.
Foto: Alejandro Medina Guzman
• On Adicta, you experiment with music production. Could you describe the process of working with more experimental trap beats from producers like Brodinski or Modulaw? Was it a challenging experience to find the right mood and tone?
I wouldn’t say it was a challenging experience… It was easy for me. I was always drawn to the darker experimental sounds, and I liked the production from both of them right away. I freestyled those songs in the studio, and I recorded them that day, after I first got to Paris.
In terms of the mood and the tone for the project, I appreciate that the label (Promesses) brought me some productions from their collaborators and then also let me do wtf I wanted to have creative freedom. I’m thankful for that.
• What was your approach to choosing such a diverse range of beats for Adicta? Did you have a specific inspiration or a clear vision for how the album should sound? We can find here a more traditional reggaeton, trap, alternative pop, and everything in between; it’s very colorful.
This album is like a diary because I was writing the songs across months of my life, It didn’t really happen according to plan, but more by chance, that I met Foudeqush when I was in CDMX playing shows, she invited me to her studio, and introduced me to Roman and Kali, other producers on the album. I think we connected because we are all drawn to more experimental sounds in club and popular music. I recorded ‘sticky’ and ‘adicta’ there with them over a few days. So this was actually the beginning of the album.
When I was talking with Promesses and they proposed sending me production, I kind of kept writing and freestyling to different beats they sent me, kind of with the same theme in mind, of love and addiction. I finished recording the album in Paris and San Francisco. The songs on the album were chosen from a lot of demos and freestyles, because they were the ones we loved best. I knew sonically it might throw some people off, but to me, it feels like it’s more personal this way, honestly, it’s like a soundtrack of a dream, of my subconscious, and the soundtrack of what I was really living, and of my memories. Thematically, I wanted to talk about what I see, what I feel, a world on fire, getting lost in the club, chasing love, of being addicted, of chasing a feeling, of being free. So bringing different styles into it kind of reflects the narrative and the time and places where the story takes place.
Also, it is related to the theme of addiction, survival, and shape-shifting, of playing different characters, of performing different characters for an audience. Of performing different versions of a fantasy. It’s a survival strategy.
• I love the corrido track „Adicta.“ Could you share more about this song? Is recording this style something you’ve wanted to do for a while? What do you like about this genre?
Thank you, yes, I’m not Mexican, but I have a lot of love and respect for the style, because I grew up surrounded by it, and started learning some Mexican music as a child, and have worked alongside Mexican and Mexican-American artists that have been mentors to me and really shaped me. I have done a couple of other tracks in the style, but this was the first single really being released by me. I wanted to record in the style for them and for all my listeners, especially in Mexico, and also outside of it, so maybe people who don’t know the genre will come to know it and have that respect and appreciation for it.
Roman, the producer of Adicta, I think, is someone that I can relate to because he works across a lot of genres and is working with other artists that are experimenting and doing beautiful art that draws from traditional elements while making it their own. I wasn’t taking myself too seriously either. Respectfully, I would say it’s an interpretation in the corrido style, not really a „real“ corrido lol because I am doing it with my own melody that’s very Spanish influenced. I’m drawing from the inspiration of the format of the corrido to tell a story, and relate to the themes of love and contraband. Roman called it „corrido introspectivo,“ and I think it describes the narrative style of the song and across the whole album. I’m drawn to that, the songs that tell stories. You can hear it in any folk music, right, same with flamenco music or country or blues, rock, rap, and electronic music. The poetry and the melody combine to make you see something, feel something; it is always a sort of emotional narrative, even if it doesn’t have words. Sometimes it’s not what you say but how you say it. That tells the story.
• What dreams or maybe goals do you have with the La Favi project? Is there anything specific you aspire to achieve, or perhaps something you would love to try, do?
I really just want my music to be heard and to make beautiful art that makes people feel something. I would like to reach millions of people this year. Everything feels uncertain, and there’s so much ugliness in the world. I hope I can make something good. I feel that if I do that, it will always be remembered.
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✲ Interview by: Krištof Budke / Follow La Favi on Instagram ✲
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