Ella

Album review

Cuban-French singer/songwriter, rapper, and flutist Yaite Ramos Rodriguez (aka La Dame Blanche) is not nearly as well-known as her LatinX peers, but then, she doesn't need to be. With her first three albums she established herself as a top-level, genre-blending beat queen and a heavyweight lyricist. Ella, her fourth long-player, takes her signature "hip-hop urbano Cubano" music to an entirely different level. She recorded the set in Paris (where she resides half the time) and Mexico with producer/collaborator Marc "Babylotion" Damblé. She delivers an Afro-Cuban feminist manifesto that refuses abstraction or clichés. La Dame Blanche explores feminine desire, spirituality, courage, resistance, and the right to refusal. Though not necessarily autobiographical, these ten songs are delivered as the multi-dimensional aspects of a woman, of her own persona directly communicating collective experiences of violence, abuse, and racial and economic inequality and transforming them into empowerment, empathy, and steely endurance. "La Creyente" opens with her flute flying headlong into criss-crossing trap beats. Ramos Rodriguez's rapid-fire delivery contrasts with the lyric, a maternal healing prayer for those who suffered 2019's deadly fires in the Amazon -- though it could easily transfer to those displaced by the wild fires ravaging California and Oregon in the autumn of 2020. "La Americana" melds jagged sci-fi synths and trap beats as Ramos Rodriguez pushes back on the word "American" as a reference for those from one Anglo-speaking country. "La Mulata" indicts those who quantify biracial women as second-class citizens. She enlists Marseille's "SouthFrap" duo Baja Frequencia to provide their signature beats and neo-electro atmospherics. (It's a return favor for her high-profile guest spot on their killer 2017 video single "El Palo.") "La Descondfiada" is a raging, paranoid crush-collision of trap, dub, Arabic pop, and paranoia, as La Dame Blanche peels back socio-economic history to reveal the insidious ways society has contributed to the seemingly permanent distrusting nature of the song's protagonist. The lyrics in the sultry yet brittle trap of "La Mentalista" make plain her narrator's erotic feelings and carnal desires with layered tropical atmospherics emerging from the backdrop. Its subtle video depicts a dressed-to-the-nines La Dame Blanche driving alone through the nighttime streets, singing out her erotic longing with a knowing smile. "La Chamaca,” featuring Tres Palabras, is set to clattering claves, loops, and handclaps, as La Dame's proud narrator claims ownership of her life and her choices with no regard for external opinions. Closer "La Maldrata" is a carnival anthem. Its rhythm and sing-song melody recall the New Orleans standard "Iko Iko," which was derived from Afro-Caribbean sources. Its lyric, however, depicts the protagonist's awakening and self-liberation from a physically and psychologically abusive relationship, and exhorts women in similar situations to escape. Given Ella's honest, empowering, revelatory lyrics, and her abundantly creative beats, mixes, and ear-opening sonics, Ramos Rodriguez's glorious paean to women's self-determination places her in a league of her own.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo