With 26 songs and cumbia as a balm, Santa Fe Klan, one of Mexico’s most influential rappers, confesses to EFE that ‘Baile cholo’ is the first album he has produced with his “five senses”, without a drop of alcohol, far from drugs and inspired by “pain” and the experiences of his neighborhood in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.
“It’s the first album I’ve recorded without going crazy, although many songs talk about the neighborhood, it’s the first one I’ve done in my five senses (…) That’s why I feel that everything is perfect,” admits the 25-year-old artist about this album revealed to the public on November 18 in a City Sessions edition on Amazon Music.
Premieres his ‘Baile Cholo’ (Cholo Dance)
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Without mincing words, Angel Jair Quezada, his birth name, says that creating in sobriety “cost him a little more”, since “sometimes alcohol or drugs make feelings flow more or say things that one does not dare to say”.
Although he assures that being clean allowed him to see a new version of himself, an Angel who sang differently, because he didn’t “have a hoarse voice” due to the effects of the smoke, to be aware of what he spent his money on and who he invited to be part of this project, which has more than six collaborations.
“Not even a puddle of alcohol fell in the studio, because there wasn’t any. I didn’t burn any couch, because there were no cigarettes, there was nothing to light”, he says about the production of this album in which the sonidero and his friends from Monterrey (north of Mexico) “kept him away from vice”, especially Javier López, with whom he sings the song ‘Bájate la falda’ (Lower your skirt).
The artist, who started in the world of music at the age of 13 with an egg carton studio in his neighborhood Santa Fe, looks at his body covered with tattoos -each one part of his story- and says: “There are times when the mind can be distracted by other things and I did it by recording a cumbia album”.
Music confronts evil
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Since he was a child, Ángel was taught that he had to take care of the rest even though he had nothing, neither money “nor comfort nor family”, as he sings in the lyrics of ‘Wuare’, that is why he returns to his neighborhood in Santa Fe, located in one of the most dangerous states in the country, threatened by drug cartels and where he runs, together with his mother, the 473 Foundation.
“My neighborhood is one of the only ones in Guanajuato that is not dedicated to these things (crime), and everyone knows it; that’s why they respect it. I am in charge of security: to make sure no one steals or sells drugs,” he says.
In addition, he explains, “since I started making music, the people in the neighborhood did too. I think I’m an inspiration and I’m very happy to be one, because I’ve had to get a lot of carnals (friends) out of the crazy life and now I look at them well”.
“There is no way that evil can defeat good. There are always good people”, says the singer of ‘Por mi México’.
And Santa Fe Klan is like that, globetrotting and magnetic of the people, that’s how he met in a barbershop the verses of the native of Zacatecas Silar Kilos de Estilo, who a couple of nights ago opened the City Sessions of ‘Baile cholo’ with a style that qualifies as “a breakdown in the system”.
“I admire Angel, even though he likes to party, he is very disciplined and very constant, I take that and use it as an example,” says Silar.
‘Baile cholo’ reached the ears of the world on November 20, a sum of true stories of the rapper and those who have embraced his life: his family, ex-partners, carnals (friends) and the promise to “learn from his mistakes without harming anyone”.
With information from EFE
