Patria y Vida
Basilio SilvaYotuel, Gente De Zona, Descemer Bueno and El Funky brought Cuba to the Latin Grammy stage with their poignant anthem “Patria y Vida.”
Dressed in all white, the group took turns running through each verse with conviction, howling their famous “Patria y Vida” slogan as a Cuban flag waved in the audience. The performance ended with a fiery chant that quickly left the stage and emerged among the crowd: “¡Viva Cuba Libre!”
After winning best urban song at the Latin Grammy premiere ceremony earlier in the day, “Patria y Vida” also won one of the biggest awards of the night: song of the year. With his Latin Grammy in hand, Yotuel dedicated the win to his mother and all Latina mothers who dream of a better future for their children.
Hosted by Ana Brenda Contreras, Carlos Rivera, and Roselyn Sánchez, the 22nd annual Latin Grammys Awards includes a star-studded lineup of both performers and presenters such as C. Tangana, Maná, Los Dos Carnales, Ozuna, Gloria Trevi, and Myke Towers, among others, taking the stage.
With the theme “rediscovering life through music,” the three-hour show will “invite audiences to rediscover what’s important in life using music as a storyline,” according to a statement from the Latin Recording Academy.
Reneé Rapp is seen as a “huge inspiration” by SZA.
The 25-year-old artist performed SZA’s Good Days in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, accompanied by two acoustic guitarists and a harp player. SZA, 35, was deeply moved by the rendition.
She posted a short video of the moment on Instagram Stories and wrote: “Renee is a HUGE inspiration, energy, voice spirit.”
During her chat with the BBC, Renee shared her thoughts about the track. She said: “I mean, I love SZA. I mean, she was one of my favorite artists in high school. And she's remained one of my favorite artists to this day. I think she's amazing. She's also, I mean, she's an incredible songwriter, but I think because she has so much swag. People don't realize how good of a singer she is. She's a fantastic vocalist and is really, really, really articulate. And I don't cover a lot of songs anymore. So I wanted to cover something that was, like, slightly challenging and also really vocally impressive, and frankly, hard for me to do.”
Renee is currently in the middle of promoting her second album, Bite Me, and opened up about how much more enjoyable it was to create compared to her first project.
She explained: “I mean, I feel like everything was incredibly different. I stopped listening to people that don't make music, because if you don't make music, then why the hell am I listening to you. And I also think the biggest difference, I think I just got a lot better. I think I have just become a better songwriter. I think I understand how to make pop music now in a way that I didn't really before. And I was very sure about what this album was and thematically, what it needed.
“So I felt like I was quite like, headstrong in like, what was gonna work and what wasn't. Because, nobody knows something better than yourself. I think a lot of things were different. I also just, like, had a lot of fun making it, like, I made it with like, three people, mostly, like, it was always like, four of us in the studio all the time, and we got so close, and some of us were already so close. So it was also just like a mess. It was such a mess, like we were just tweaking every day. It was so fun. And I don't think I enjoyed making the first one as much.”
