Villano Antillano

I’m doing good, thank you. I’m taking in a new stage of my life, creatively and artistically to be honest. It’s been a great couple of years: we’ve done a lot of work and we’ve progressed a lot. We’ve inserted ourselves into the narrative in so many ways that personally, I feel like this is sort of why there’s so much backlash right now politically — because we’re so present and they can’t take it.

The reception has been crazy. When I initially did it, it was just something that kind of flowed from me.  I think there were some elements of channelling.  I sampled older works of other queer bands from Puerto Rico which had no recognition, basically just people from Puerto Rico knew them. But these are my elder queers, and it turned out that the band that made this album that I wanted the stems from, we had the same publisher.

Yeah totally. There was this one song called Diva that really stuck with me. It's about a trans woman and I heard this song possibly in 2008 when I was in middle school. I didn't know what it was about and then life, the Internet, globalisation It kind of drifted away and I heard it again in my older years. I reached out to Eduardo Alegría, which is one of the artists who is on the song, and I told him about what I wanted to do and that I wanted to sample the stems from that track because it has some very particular synths. He's like well, it was published in 2003 and the demo was from 1985. That blew my mind. I was like are you fucking serious? Somebody in 1985 was writing about experiences that feel so unique to me. It was very humbling and very beautiful to know that a lot of people before me had put words to these sentiments already and to be able to have that and receive that and make something of it, was crazy.

Right, so then I put all of that into the album and people have received it as such.
People just innately connect with especially the baddies and especially the girls because it's fuelled by rage and a lot of us have it in us.
We might not have it out and about every single day because we have to form a part of society, but a lot of us have a lot of rage.

It’s going to be fierce! Thank you to Suzio for having me. It's been an ongoing process. The first time I went to Denmark, a place where Spanish or English are not the main thing, it was a whole other vibe. I'm like, oh my god, what the fuck, are they gonna fucking vibe? Are they gonna get it? You do wonder how they're gonna receive it and I feel like there's something so universal in music and specifically about the revolutionary aspects that I can't escape of being a trans woman on stage, that I feel people just connect regardless of whether you understand what the music says or not.  The music slaps though (laughs). A lot of people connect with it regardless of whether you're queer or not. A lot of people don't get to live in their truth specifically in this day and age. It's not about queer people more so but straight people too, they can't live in their truth. They gotta own up to what their mum and dad want, or society wants from them, so freedom is a universal thing that we all pursue and when we get on the stage and we embody that, people connect.

They've always been important but right now with everything that's happening it’s a safe space for all of us to actually be with people who get it. I feel like you can't really let loose around straight people as much.

Exactly! You can't get kooky with the girls because people misconstrue, or they don't see it. I feel like when you're around queer people there's so much that you don't have to explain because it's just this language that we understand each other. It's beautiful that we have an influx of straight people coming in and a diversity because that's what it's about at the end of the day, but we should never lose sight of who this is for.

Gentrification is something that's inescapable and we're seeing it everywhere, but I do also think that there are a lot of people who are clear about how to do this and I know and I trust that this is our legacy, this is something that has kept us alive for eons, community. So, the fact that people are gentrifying it now and coming into this space, no matter how you come into it, if you're new to it and this is not your reality, this is not your birthright and your history. And you know nothing about how trans people have literally resisted since the beginning of times. If you don't know anything about that, you would think maybe you can come into this space and dictate but if you know, the girls are not going to let you and trans people are not going to let you. We are very overzealous although we're tolerant. I feel like I'm not straight phobic, I have straight friends, I have no problem with straight people as long as they do it in their home (laughs). But, no joke like they can insert themselves but at the end of the day when something is made by somebody who is queer adjacent and not queer themselves, there's a disconnect.

Oh my god, yes, absolutely I love this question, it's one of my favourite questions so far nobody has ever asked me this, thank you. I feel like the biggest lesson I learnt about touring is dehumanisation. Touring is such a dehumanising experience for artists. Specifically, when you're touring festivals and big things like that, sometimes you don't get to connect with the fans. It's literally all like, you're here and you lose track. Specifically, with a project like me and like ours and something that queer people feel like is theirs, I've never like lost sight of what I do and my project.

This is kind of crazy because you know how straight people sometimes have no semblance of anything? I could be walking around with my friends, and I kid you the fuck not, sometimes people stop us, and they don't know which one of us is Villano Antillano, you know they don't. They just know Villano Antillano is some tranny and it's five of them here so which one of them is it? (laughs) We've always laughed because, that never happens with queer people, they get it, obviously. But I think that's such a beautiful metaphor for what the project is. Literally all of us kind of are Villano Antillano. All of us could potentially be number one, because that's how society reduces us to this one thing where, yeah, you're all the same thing. I think that our voices and our stories and our yearning for power is so universal that anybody could claim it and I would have no problem with it.
Everything that I've done, and my livelihood even, is owed to the community. So, it's a group project and you kind of lose sight of that, returning to your previous question, when you're touring. You don't have this chance to connect with people. One of the most beautiful things I've experienced touring is meeting people and hugging people and listening to their stories. This might happen with other artists, no shade at all, but bigger pop artists? People go crazy for them because of marketing, because I see them everywhere, but you don't have a real connection. This person might have accompanied you through sad times with their music but it's something different when a trans girl from Chile or Puerto Rico from this rural place travels days to see you and hug you and starts crying because you mean something to her. You represent a possibility to actually live and do something in the world. So, at first it would take me by surprise when people would cry but now, I get it. I feel it in those hugs. It’s not about meeting an icon or somebody they see on the Internet. It's about them and that's beautiful.

Oh yeah, obviously (laughs). But we all are and that's the pretty thing and there's so much love behind this behind this.

A lot of them. This ties really to how I speak Spanish and how it's consumed and by whom it is consumed because I have had instances in Spain, no shade to Spain, I love Spain, they’ve been a wonderful country to me and I have such a huge fan base it's all love, but Spain has a racism problem. I feel like it's not just Spain if we're being objective, it's the world. Me moving through Spain and seeing it sometimes it's like I have been put in a position where people have told me “Oh no, what you speak is not Spanish” and “Habla bien por que eso no es castellano no te entiendo un carajo”. I don't feel like I owe any respect to any of the languages that were imposed on me, neither Spanish nor English. I'm very good but when I want to speak it to you, I speak it to you. I think that plays into people sometimes not understanding what I'm saying because I speak in a very particular way which is also a very Caribbean thing. Bars that have gone over people's heads, I could honestly start and not finish. In Muñeca for example, I say something about, “No soy una chica normal” and for the longest time I would hear people say, “Yo soy una chica normal”. That's how I know you’re a cis heterosexual.
I do read a lot, and I did have a very good education, which is a very big privilege but also I don't think that being a good rapper has to do with you having a lot of knowledge of words. It has nothing to do with academia. It's how you bend the language. If you look into it and you read the lyrics, there's always something there. I very much grew up on Nicki [Minaj]. I grew up on Nicki I was in middle school in 2007 listening to the Jump Off’ 07 on YouTube (laughs) feeling my oats. It's crazy how sometimes you don't know who your art is gonna touch. Cause I'm a hundred percent sure she never thought this was gonna do anything for the trans girlies or the millions of gay boys that live for her. I constantly try to push my pen. Like, how can I make this cuntier? How can I make this so that when somebody sits down and actually reads into what I'm saying they gag?

It was more of an observation of what we consume because misogyny is the most glorified thing on earth, especially in rap. In the context we're living right now, with what happened with the elections and all that. I've seen things online like women are property, women are not humans and they're not people. It should come as no surprise because this is how men behave, and this is how the government behaves, and this is how the world behaves. So, people kind of lose their heads when you name a project Miss Misogyny like Oh are you saying Misogyny is good? No, I'm literally just fucking stating facts. This is what you love to consume so here have it, consume! But that's also a critique, isn’t it?
Going back to bars that go over people’s heads, here's one, on Runway I say something like: “Todos me aman cuando estoy raquítica. Dejo de comer, no siento las críticas”. People think oh yeah, it's hot! That's an eating disorder, bitch. That's not cute, that's an eating disorder. It's also very tied to vanity, it's tied to fashion, and it's tied to this elitist lifestyle that a bunch of people are persuaded into for no reason. So, it’s literally just a critique I am not a misogynist at all (laughs).

I've collaborated with a bunch of Spanish artists, and one of my biggest fan bases is in Spain, so I feel it's naturally developed. I started kicking it with a bunch of people and something interesting happens where I come from: none of the male artists are going to collaborate with me where I come from. No matter how much they live for my project associating with me comes with repercussions, with questions because also trans women are sexualised to oblivion so, I can't be in Puerto Rico in proximity to a straight man without it being, oh, they're fucking! So, they think that stay away, and I totally understand that! I feel like society is not very permissive to let men just not step out of this little confine of a box you want them in. But, whatever, they put themselves there.
I didn't really see that in Spain. I collaborated with Bejo, who is a rapper that I’ve admired greatly since I was una chamaquita on YouTube. Bejo's been making music since before I was making music and he had no questions about it, it was a no brainer. That was something crazy to me, so I started collaborating with a bunch of Spanish artists and I worked with La Cruz. To me, it’s incredibly important what La Cruz symbolises specifically, with this mumbo jumbo that cis people want cause cis people think it's all the same: gay, trans, whatever the fuck, it's all the same. So, him coming in as a masculine gay man who's doing his masculine gay thing for the masculines, that needs representation too! It's not what the executives think it is, it’s what you are.
Also being queer in this industry, we rely on each other a lot. Everybody, not just him and me. Everyone I’ve met that is queer, we talk. It's like, bitch give me the 411, what about this person because it's crazy. It's the trenches in here. We are also the first faces of a new kind of phenomenon so to speak, so we're gonna run into these things. People should know that we fight a very dirty fight behind doors. There's a bunch of things that people never see because that's what the industry is. You see the flash, the glamorous things, but behind closed doors, horrific things happen, and we endure them. Shout out to every queer artist out there who is trying to make it or making it because, it's a lot of us.

I love this girl. Like her bars, come on! La Blackie came into my life when I heard about her and I saw her at a show of mine and she was in the crowd and I literally had to be like, shout out La Blackie, I fucking love you. Her bars are crazy, and what we were talking about earlier, I think it's very important that, worldwide, not just in Spain, the faces of the urban movement of reggaeton, of rap, of hip hop, it's very problematic that they're all white. It's a direct result of anti-blackness. La Blackie is honestly one of the best rappers I have heard in Spain, period. The fact that she's a black woman, to me it was a no-brainer. If I’m in a position to collaborate with any artist that I know deserves it with every fibre of her being, it's her. It was a pleasure because you know us rappers, we're feisty and she's feisty and I'm feisty and it was crazy that throughout all of it, we maintained such a good friendship and we learnt from each other. I'm a little bit further into the game than her, in the sense that I have been in the public eye a little bit longer but It's literally sitting down and me sharing all I can with her. There’s this kinship behind it because we're literally breaking barriers. Who would’ve thought que la Negra y la maricona? Que tiemble España, que tiemble Franco (laughs).

I don't meditate specifically sitting down doing yoga, but I do have certain rituals. I love going to the gym because that's my moment to lock in and just do a repetitive series of exercises where I don't have to think and I can just push through so, maybe that's my meditation.

Period! That bar is an homage to Gata Cattana who is a Spanish rapper.  She came into my life when I was still in college, and I heard about her when I was in second year of university and her lyrics were so fucking insane.  She’s an icon. It’s crazy that it ties back to Spain you see? I don't know there's something about Spain and me (laughs).

I feel like artists who don't voice anything are not really artists they're marketing products.
That's why you can't speak up, because you're going to lose endorsements, you're going to lose money, fans and revenue. I'm not shading that because we all live in the capitalistic wheel, and we all have to survive. But I don't feel like I can do that because I don't come from that walk of life. I don't see myself becoming a millionaire because honestly that would suppose a hoarding of wealth that I'm just not going to do. I have friends who literally don't have food. I have friends who are still doing sex work in Puerto Rico, and I'm never going to hoard wealth and not give it back to my girls, it’s just not going to happen for me. That's my happiness and that's how I measure success: with how much of an impact I have had in the lives of the people around me. I've employed my friends; they travel the world with me, but it doesn't stop there. We give back to the girls back home because if we don't, nobody else is going to and if we know anything about the history of us, it is that we save each other, nobody else is going to save us. It's community. So, I don't feel I could take that neutrality. If I don't know about a conflict, I don't necessarily have to talk about everything, but when I know that something is good or it’s bad and I position myself, I don’t care who likes it because most people have a problem with me as it is so me importa un carajo (laughs).

This is something that's really been eye-opening for me, traveling. Puerto Rico is a very inhospitable place and being a trans person in Puerto Rico is crazy. I can only speak of my experience as a trans woman but being a trans woman in Puerto Rico is literally life or death. I don't know when it's going to be one of my girls, It's a Russian roulette. But I have travelled to the craziest places, the most dangerous poverty stricken places where you would think that we cannot be, we are, and we thrive! I've seen Transsexual baddies in the favelas, I’ve seen them at the Barrio and that's where they are the fucking fiercest! That's a lesson to be learned about our resilience and about how we're just eternal really. We have been here forever; we will be here forever. No matter what you legislate and no matter what you do, we've always found a way and we will. That's why they've resorted to the drastic measures that they have, which is crazy. But at the end of the day, it’s going to be a lot of suffering, but it won't give the results that they want because we are literally an eternal force.

I always talk about me not having these crazy big role models and I'm not going to give you a superstar name because I don't feel like superstars are close to my reality. My inspirations are my trans friends that work in a medical office from 9 to 5. Do you know what that is and what you have to deal with in an office? That’s crazy! That to me is somebody to look up to because my girls get up every morning and they deal with shit, and they hustle and they're happy. That's the crazy part that sometimes you lose sight of how bad things are but people who have half of what you do are immensely happier. How is that? So, I would say my friends are always going to be my role models pero all the queer baddies out there actually killing it too. I feel like Queer people and trans people specifically, we're mirrors. We see so much of ourselves in each other sometimes in our struggles and the things we had to hide, the things we had to keep secret. When we share these stories with each other there’s this kinship and this valour. The jump that started my transition was my trans girlfriends, nobody pushed me. I remember the first time I came out to one of my closest friends who's a trans woman, she was like, "baby I knew from the get go and I'm happy you know now but I always knew and I'm happy that you got here by yourself because it wasn't my place to tell you. It was my place to just accompany you on the journey.” There's this really funny joke we have about the similarities between transsexualism and vampirism because there's something there, we're a little vampire biting each other and transsexualizing each other (laughs).

I would say conscious baddie era. I'm a bad bitch but I will leave the club before things get nasty. I will leave the club before the lights go on and everybody looks busted (laughs). I am an experienced seasoned veteran, so I know when to quit. That's the stage I'm in right now. I'm okay, I have learned a lot, not just through my walk of life and in my career, but just my experiences and everything that I've had to overcome to be here and not just me, my friends. We learn collectively as well, so right now I am feeling super grateful but also wary of all the work that needs to be done. There is a lot of fatigue because we have been resisting for so long, but we also have the capacity to buckle up and focus and do it again because they're not gonna beat us!

I sonically gravitate to this dark edgy atmosphere. I just feel like it sets the tone, it sets the atmosphere for what I talk about which is usually sex and nightlife and lust. I have been lucky to come up on a wave where that's actually kind of spreading and a lot of other artists are doing it as well and a bunch of producers are nudging into that direction. I feel like all the pretty girls wanna be bad. Bad girls are fun!

(Laughs) You know, I feel like this happens to every single artist. I'm so sure Beyonce does not enjoy doing Single Ladies anymore (laughs). Cause, come on! But I am very grateful of the opportunity that that gave to not only me but to the community and the worldwide repercussions that it had, because it did. It's a before and after in my country’s history, the urban genre’s history, the history of reggaeton and a lot of other things. So, I'm grateful for it, and I feel like my emotions are second because when I see how people lose it, it's okay. It's for them so I'll keep doing it (laughs).