Ana Tijoux’s first album in almost a decade is titled Vida, but it began as a meditation on death.
The French Chilean rapper began writing the songs for her fifth album following a series of personal losses, including a beloved sister. "I wanted to talk about the fragility of life. What I didn’t know when we began was that the name of the album would be ‘Life,’" Tijoux recalls, speaking from her home in Barcelona. "I wanted to call it, ‘Duelo,’ which is the complete opposite." Translated from Spanish, duelo means mourning.
This concept for the album evolved as the writing progressed. The first shift occurred when the musician began to write "Tania," which honors the sister she lost to cancer in 2019. "When I was thinking about her, I was thinking in a very happy way. It was not only with sadness," she tells GRAMMY.com. She couldn’t write a song, then, that was simply sad. "I think when you are confronted by death and someone’s passing, you are confronted by all that mixture of emotion and suddenly it moves, naturally," she theorizes.
Tijoux let it move. Through such honest confrontations, Vida grew into an album full of complex emotions about 10 years worth.
"Tania" is a profound and moving tribute that builds into a thumping dembow rhythm fit for the dancefloor. The song is all the more poignant for evoking a celebration. Dance was a vital part of grieving for Tijoux; to move from grief back toward life, she had to literally move. In connecting to her body, the most obvious reminder of being alive, the musician found a source of healing.
"I feel I have this dissociation between my body, sometimes, and my brain," Tijoux muses. "I think we get this dissociation from our education, or perhaps we always feel that body movement is something superficial, but it’s interesting how the body responds to music, the tempo and the BPM."
This line of thinking — and Tijoux’s desire to dance — manifested on the album in a scintillating array of danceable sounds: tropical house, digital cumbia and Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms that interlock with boom-bap beats.
The Spanish-language emcee's fifth full-length evolved through collaboration with her long-time producer Andrés Celis, as they wrote from their respective homes (Tijoux in Spain, where she relocated during the pandemic, and Celis in Santiago, Chile). "It was a dialogue. Sometimes, it was me bringing an idea and he was trying to translate that idea through melody. Other times, he had a melody and I would say, ‘Oh, this makes me feel like this, or that puts me in that mood," she says of the creative process.
Through this back and forth during isolation, a lively, rhythmic album emerged from what was originally conceived of as a somber memorial. This is not to say that it’s a carefree album. In keeping with the rap pioneer’s previous work, Vida is driven by fight, in particular, the fight to preserve life and joy in the face of cruelty and death.
Like Talib Kweli, who guests with De La Soul's Plug 1 on the album’s multilingual ode to hip-hop "Tue Sae," Tijoux has been a lyrical conscience in the world of rap since her debut. This album may be extremely personal, but it also finds her sharp as ever on political subjects, holding forth in her inimitable, rapid-fire flow. With "Óyeme," a song inspired by 2023 news reports that authorities in England planned to house hundreds of asylum seekers on a barge, Tijoux connects the racism that justified the transantlantic slave trade with the racism behind the violence inflicted on refugees and migrants.
Because Tijoux’s new album is so emotionally intense, its moments of uplift and release hit with more power too. The title track, which features English soul singer Omar, is a funky jazz-hop love song to life itself and could not be more joyful. Its author is quick to point out that, even when the album is lighthearted, it isn’t meant to be escapist.
"It’s not in a mood of ‘nothing is happening,’ because everything is happening right now. It’s because I feel that we need to continue to put hope in this world, because, if not, I don’t know how to raise my children," she explains.
Tijoux’s two children — Luciano, 18, and Emiliana, 10 — are present on the album in many ways. "Niñx" is a fiercely loving song expressing her aspirations for her daughter, mostly that she grows up brave and free, and never loses her laughter. Album opener "Millionaria" has a little bit of fun with the trope of the iced out rap star with stacks of money and designer clothes by rapping about how rich she is — in the love of friends and family. The song brings extreme mom energy in a way that the world badly needs right now.
Ultimately, Tijoux made the album she herself needed to hear. "It was almost like an anthem for me to get my energy up and move, through vitality, through the BPM of life," she admits. That last phrase raises an interesting question: What is the BPM of life? Without having to think, Tijoux answers: "It’s every kind of BPM. It changes all the time. I guess it’s like emotion." Of course, it would be. Life’s tempo would be variable and elastic, like the breath, the heartbeat, or a J Dilla track. Varied as it is, Vida is a clear case of art imitating life.
Inside Residente's 'Las Letras Ya No Importan': How His New Album Shows The Rapper In Transition