ILE
NACARILE (BABY BLUE VINYL) - LP

UPC: 196587556211
Label: SONY U.S. LATIN
Format: LP
Release Date: December 9, 2022
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Track Listing: 

1. A la deriva (iLe & Flor de Toloache)
2. Ningún Lugar (iLe & Trueno)
3. (Escapándome) de mí
4. En Cantos (iLe & Natalia Lafourcade)
5. Lo Que Yo Quería
6. ALGO BONITO (iLe & Ivy Queen)
7. Cuando TE MIRO (iLe & Rodrigo Cuevas)
8. Donde nadie más Respira
9. Traguito (iLe & Mon Laferte)
10. Paisaje
11. No Es Importante

Puerto Rican star Ileana "iLe" Cabra has announced her third studio album Nacarile set for release on October 21.

The new single "Traguito" is a collaboration with the Chilean-Mexican icon Mon Laferte. The song reflects on the scars of patriarchal love, transforming the tough-talk attitude of classic boleros through today . "Traguito" takes cues from a Julia de Burgos poem titled “Yo Misma Fui Mi Ruta.” In the chorus, iLe reimagines the trope of a “difficult” woman, putting the focus on her agency: “No es que yo fuera difícil/Es que fui como quería,” she sings (“It’s not that I was difficult/It’s that I was the way I wanted to be”).

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.

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.’”