Becky G is processing her feelings in the open — and she’s eager to keep building on what she accomplished last year with Esquinas. On Thursday, the Mexican American singer released the emotional corrido “Como Diablos,” as she announced her upcoming album, Encuentros, out Oct. 10.
“I feel like Esquinas was a process of removal: removing everything that I’m not to become everything that I’ve always truly been on the inside,” she tells Rolling Stone. “That’s why I was like, ‘I don’t want to abandon this world that I feel so safe in as an artist. I want to expand it.’ And as soon as Esquinas was out we continued making music. We didn’t stop.” She’ll show what that means with Encuentros, which she describes as “Esquinas at night” with more “depth and mystique.”
Becky enlisted songwriters Sara Schell and Hector Enrique Guerrero for “Como Diablos,” which she says holds the strongest emotion on the album as a whole. The video for the song, directed by Leo Aguirre, sees Becky G in a junkyard in Monterrey as she sings about her intense experience following a breakup. “I have a pain in my heart, and it won’t go away,” she sings in Spanish. “I tried everything, but there aren’t pills to forget you.”
The video splices clips of Becky, dressed in Willy Chavarria, while a stampede of men circles her at the junkyard and a crane claws through beat-up cars around her.
“It’s about how internalizing your emotions turns into this power that’s inward, but also how that translates outward,” she says. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be an anger that is explosive, but it can still have this vibration that causes the ground to shake… And me being a little chaparrita, I loved this interpretation of strength.”
Becky says being on the set reminded her of her grandpa since his backyard back in Inglewood “was literally just a junkyard” — he and his brothers would spend hours fixing cars. “I felt like I was at home,” she says with a giggle. “There were little firulais [little dogs] running everywhere and the people from the auto shop who called their wives and told them we were there. There was an energy in the air that felt very welcoming.”
Becky says she “found something really special” in her artistry while making “Como Diablos” and the rest of Encuentros, and that she’s been proud of how she’s been able to explore new ways of making music on the album. “It’s been really fun to play with, sonically,” she says. “It’s like a tone of voice I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten to explore. I feel like you can really hear me.”
Becky describes each of the songs on the new album like the “bolitas from Inside Out” representing the different memories and emotions in her life, and how they’re all able to co-exist in herself and on her project.
“I feel this ability to express myself without any reservation,” she says. “I’m really enjoying this space I’m in.”
Encuentros, which also features the Oscar Maydon-featuring “Mercedes,” will arrive just in time for her Casa Gomez: Otro Capitulo tour this fall, which includes stops in Atlanta, Columbus, San Antonio, and Phoenix.
“What I’m learning right now with my music is to do things that make me happy,” she adds. “To do things that feel right to me, and the results of that I can’t necessarily control. This is a huge part of my self-discovery as a young woman and as an artist.”