How Rosalía Became the Queen of the Global Nightclub

GQ Hype: It’s the big story of right now.¿Chica, qué dices? The question—’Girl, what you sayin’?’—opens Motomami, the Spanish pop star Rosalía’s latest album, released in March. It is a simple question but also a freighted one. After all, no one, least of all Rosalía, could have foreseen that a Spanish-language record that she conceived and produced independently as part of her college thesis project, 2018’s El Mal Querer, would catapult her to global success. But Rosalía’s one-of-one blending of flamenco with modern sounds enraptured listeners and synced up with what some called the ‘second Latin explosion,’ after the late-’90s moment when artists like Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, and Enrique Iglesias broke into American pop with English-language hits.