René Pérez Joglar, known by his stage name Residente, is a 38-year-old Puerto Rican rapper that is working on a new album. He is best known as one half of Calle 13, a music duo with his step-brother, Eduardo José Cabra Martínez, known as Visitante. However, Residente’s new album, set to release in March, is a solo album.
Residente had his DNA tested a few years ago. Like many Latin Americans, his ancestry comes from quite a few different parts of the world. Using these results as inspiration, he has been travelling around the world and recording with local artists from the places that his ancestry originates. He has visited many different locations, such as China, Georgia, and Siberia.
Residente has set up a website as part of this project. The page shows the visitor’s generic location, such as “Georgia, US” and shows the generic location of other visitors to the site and how many kilometers away they are. The site also allows the visitor to explore a map in which they can click on locations that will lead to videos in which people from each location speak in their own language about their culture, as well as featuring Residente as he explores where his ancestry comes from.
Each location has a few sections, such as the gallery, which contains photos from Residente’s trip to that location, as well as a “Sounds” section in which one can hear some of the sounds Residente recorded there. When he launched this website this past December, he stated on his Facebook, “We are all residentes in the spaces that confine us. Only here, there are no borders.”
On January 13, Residente released his first single from this project on his YouTube channel. The music video is titled “Somos Anormales,” which translates to “We Are Abnormal.” This video is the first that he has ever directed. It is an unusual, but fascinating video that seems to tell the story of the birth of humanity with an African woman shown giving birth to people of all backgrounds.
Along with collaborating with little known global artists, Residente’s album will also feature Lin-Manuel Miranda, known as the creator of the famous Broadway musical, Hamilton. Residente and Lin Manuel-Miranda have collaborated before on the remix for “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done),” a song from The Hamilton Mixtape. On Residente's album, Miranda stated on his twitter:
According to the article that is linked in this tweet from The New York Times, Residente and Lin Manuel-Miranda are third cousins, which they discovered when Miranda met Residente’s mother and she saw similarities in his face with the face of a shared relative. About this collaboration, the article states, "The album will open with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of 'Hamilton,' rapping about the concept in both Spanish and English. He rhymes about how DNA results can 'send you to lands of ice, dirt and sand/a map of the world in the lines of your hand.'"
This global album is set to release in March and, in regards to a tour, his website says "Release date spring 2017."
