Something most Koreans don’t know about Rosalía is that she’s Hispanic, but not Latina. Hispanic refers to Spanish-speaking people, while Latina, its etymology notwithstanding, is now mainly used to refer to women of Latin American descent (men are referred to as Latino, and Latinx can also be used regardless of gender). Rosalía is from Barcelona, Spain, so while she sings Latin pop, she isn’t herself Latina. The fact that she’s mistaken for being Latina in as distant a country as Korea shows how inseparable the relationship between Latin America and Latin pop is and how Latin pop’s status in the United States has grown to the point that Rosalía, who first found popularity in Europe, later became famous in Latin America and now the US market as well.

She has said she fell in love with flamenco, a style of folk music from southern Spain, from an early age. She went on to major in flamenco vocals in university and was taught by a leading musician in the style. Rosalía released a flamenco-influenced album, Los Ángeles, in 2017 while studying, which received considerable attention from music critics the world over. Columbian rock star Juanes was particularly impressed when he was in Spain and saw Rosalía perform. “She’s got it all: sex appeal, talent, aesthetics,” Juanes said. “This woman’s come here to change music.” He referred Rosalía to his management company, after which point her second album took off. Released in 2018, El Mal Querer is a concept album based on the literary work Flamenca and also served as her graduation project. The music video for the first single, “Malamente,” combines elements of Spanish culture, like flamenco and bullfighting, with the aesthetics of American trap and hip hop culture, such as colorful nails, motorcycles and cars. The video has over 150 million views on YouTube to date, confirming her status as a rising global star.

Flamenco has been a beloved musical style for many and for a long. Although it has its origins in the Andalusia region of Spain, flamenco was also influenced by Latin American music, as Rosalía has mentioned in an interview; in New Mexico in the US, the music is proudly preserved as a part of their local culture. The minor descending iv-III-II-I progression—a widely used series of chords in flamenco music known as the Andalusian cadence—made its way to the US and was later mixed together with blues and from there spread around the world in pop music. It adds an intensity to the genre that makes people from all over fall in love with it, but some also saw it as characteristic of antiquated folk music. Yet it was Rosalía’s daring approach to meld flamenco’s sense of passion, longing and tragedy with a hip hop sound that would lead young people to cheer her on.

In 2019, Rosalía won four awards, including Album of the Year for El Mal Querer, at the Latin Grammy Awards. She also won an MTV Video Music Award for the flamenco-style choreography for her and J Balvin’s reggaeton song “Con Altura.” Latin pop was gaining ground in the US at the time, and so a lot of people were paying especially close attention to Rosalía. A debate emerged on whether or not non-Latina Europeans should be allowed to sweep the Latin Grammy Awards. Even in Spain, questions arose whether Rosalía, not herself from Andalusia, was appropriating flamenco, noting the historically bitter relationship between Andalusia and Catalonia. This isn’t the first time a Spanish singer has risen to worldwide fame, including in Latin America. Alejandro Sanz, the original singer of a song JONGHYUN covered, “Y Si Fuera Ella,” is famous in Korea, and Spanish singers like Enrique Iglesias continued to be popular into the 2010s ever since the Ricky Martin craze of the 1990s; more recent singers include Pablo Alborán. At the time these singers made it big, few people objected to their music being labeled Latin pop. As of this year, Rosalía’s popularity continues to skyrocket, shaking the distinction between traditional and modern music to its core and blurring the lines between them. Some may feel intimidated by such immense momentum; meanwhile, at the 2020 US Grammy Awards, she also walked away with a win for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album.

Rosalía continues her expansive career this year with the release of her third album, Motomami. Between the release of her second and third albums, she performed with Latin American pop stars like Ozuna, J Balvin and Bad Bunny, singing songs in Latin pop’s best-known genre, reggaeton. She also collaborated with Billie Eilish and Travis Scott. In the intervening years, Rosalía’s already become a Latin pop sure-fire hit machine. Many big-name artists with an interest in Latin pop are after a chance to collaborate with her. She sings the lyrics she wrote for “La Fama,” the first single off Motomami, with the Weeknd and in Spanish. As a native of East Asia, what I find more immediately noticeable in Motomami are the allusions to Japanese subculture otherwise known as otaku subculture. Rosalía is a young woman who’s just turned 30 and is highly knowledgeable when it comes to Internet culture and the otaku culture that thrives therein. At times she draws on this culture to be humorous and at other times to add a sense of contemporaneity. She’s similar to Grimes and Billie Eilish in that regard. The song “Chicken Teriyaki,” where the Japanese and Spanish languages playfully intermingle, has catlike choreography like that which had been seen by a number of Asian girl groups. In the track “Hentai,” she confesses to a man that “I wanna make you hentai” (the term translates to “pervert” in Japanese, but mostly refers to Japanese anime pornography when used in the West). It likely sounds exotic and therefore fun to Westerners, but it might be slightly off-putting for East Asian women.

What’s truly astounding is that Rosalía has her hands on every step of the process, including the music, the lyrics, the narrative, the choreography and all the visual work. She’s not only a phenomenal performer, but a director and producer who knows exactly what she wants. When people look at her, many of them see a well-rounded pop star in the tradition of Madonna, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and others of that ilk. When you’re as talented a musician as Rosalía is, there’s nothing excessive about such expectations.