Rosalía unveils second single from ‘Motomami’ – listen to ‘Saoko’

Rosalía has shared another new track from her forthcoming third album – you can see the video below.

‘Saoko’ is the second single from ‘Motomami’, a characteristically scuzzy electronic take on reggaeton, sampling a couple of the genre’s key players. It follows lead single ‘La Fama’, which features The Weeknd, and comes after the Spanish singer-songwriter teased the track, along with unreleased cuts ‘Candy’ and ‘Hentai’, on TikTok.

‘Motomami’ will be Rosalía’s first full-length since her 2018 opus ‘El Mal Querer’, which won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album and was named by Rolling Stone as the greatest Spanish-language album of all time in 2020. Earlier this week, the Barcelona native unveiled the artwork for ‘Motomami’.

Now, she’s shared audio of ‘Saoko’, as well as a vibrant new music video, directed by Valentin Petit, in which she heads up an all-female biker gang. In a statement, she said of the song: “Naming my next track “SAOKO” and sampling Yankee and Wisin for me is the most direct homage I can make to classic reggaeton, a genre that I love and that has been a constant and great inspiration throughout the MOTOMAMI project. 

“I started “SAOKO’s” beat playing the upright piano at Electric Lady’s Studio B in NY, I remember it like it was yesterday,” she continued. “It was at night and making this beat seemed as fun as driving a Lambo. I then distorted this piano and added some classic reggaeton drums from a library that NaisGai had sent me some time ago, which by the way is something very special to me because this library has been passed from one generation of producers to another for a long time.”

‘Motomami’ is due out via Columbia Records on March 18. Guest appearances from Tego Calderón and Tokischa are confirmed, with speculation rife that Frank Ocean will also feature. The album shares its name with a new radio station on ‘Grand Theft Auto Online’, which went live in December and sees Rosalía and Venezuelan experimentalist Arca host a frequency dedicated to boundary-busting pop.