In 2016, Danay Suárez reached that point in her life where nothing seems to make sense and everything becomes predictable. In an inner cry, she asked God “that, if He existed, He would reveal Himself, because she no longer wanted to live,” but neither did she want to die. She only sought to fill the spiritual voids that neither fame nor money can replace. From that moment on, she says, she accepted Jesus as the only savior of her life. “I had never felt so much peace and security before, not even when meditating,” says the rapper.
For the past four years, this atypical rapper has been between Miami and Havana working on the creation of her sixth album, ChangeIt has been a period of apparent silence where he has taken the time to create, live other work experiences outside of music and consolidate a work of which he speaks with deep satisfaction.
On July 7, digital platforms received this work, which is a dissident manifesto against new social media trends, viral on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. “It is a true weapon to be demystified and decoded with the intelligence that is being replaced by artificial intelligence,” says the singer about her recent album, which she considers “the most powerful of her career.”
Throughout 10 songs, Danay immerses herself in a sound-visual-spiritual journey that transcends the boundaries of rap to experience an amalgam of sounds with mixtures ofrip hop, filin, techno, trap either reggae; all of them talking to each other in harmony and coherence as the songs go by. Her lyrics go straight to the heart of the social and spiritual issues that concern her. She has been branded a fundamentalist fanatic for her views on abortion and the concept of family, but she reaffirms her right to express this message of faith and discontent with modern dystopias. Is her preaching right or wrong? That depends on the eye that judges and interprets it. She assumes each of her words, lives according to them and releases them into the air in case someone wants to listen to them.
The family is one of the precepts that this singer advocates in her speech, and Change It is a project born in her bosom. The musical production was in charge of her husband, the Cuban pianist and composer Jesús Pupo, who produced each of the songs without the use of the samples characteristic of the backgrounds rap and urban music. “He composed the pieces based on classical elements and added folkloric force without a religious tone. This work was finally sealed with the meticulous mastering of one of the best in the field, Mike Fuller, in the city of Miami,” says Suárez.
The visual art in the YouTube videos has been conceived as a cinematic series that are actually independent works in themselves. “Each visual aspect of the album has been carefully considered to create a complete and immersive experience that complements the music and the message. The lighting in the videos was designed by Ledián Fernández and Ever Fernández, who was also in charge of the cameras. The visual editing reached a poetically elevated tone with the intervention of Asiel Babastro, especially in the video for the song Vine A,” says Suárez.
The cover is an oil painting by Jesús Emmanuel Villarreal, a graduate in art and painting from the Academy of Florence. Here the artist is portrayed with her back to a fairground that can be interpreted as a reflection of modern society. Danay, who has controlled every detail of this project, says that her idea was “to make a sarcastic observation of the Baroque period by constructing the music, the color palette and the painting technique, considering that this society is very Baroque, with a lot of exterior ornamentation and little interior essence.”
Nobody owns anybody is the sixth song on the album. This piece incorporates rumba into the album’s sound spectrum. Many people, after converting to Christianity, reject the folkloric elements of other cultures, but for this rapper, “limiting artistic expressions due to religious restrictions is a fatal error.”
“I follow Jesus and I believe in him, but I am not religious,” says the singer. “In this rumba I do not worship any deity created by human imagination, but I celebrate the gift that God has given to musicians to carry forward a legacy as important as that of rumba, recognized worldwide as a cultural heritage.”
Danay Suárez has decided to leave the music industry to pursue her independent career. I came to is the first song on the album. With influences of trap and drill, it questions those artists who make a career selling vices and violence in songs consumed mostly by a teenage audience. “You are not hot, nor are you cold/you are a link that leads to emptiness,” highlights one of those verses in which he encourages us to question modern mass art, what emerging generations consume and its future consequences.
For many artists, signing with a music multinational like Universal Music is a dream goal. However, Danay’s experience with the empire was another trigger for her to forge her own path. “I decided to separate myself when I realized that the world was being sold an inflated bubble, an illusion, and that, independently, I could at least bring the message and artistic expression to fruition.”
“I never imagined that my music would end up being filed away as just another number in that company, when my sound was precisely a reference for many Latin artists who followed with similar sounds, willing to do anything morally to achieve fame and success. An example of this was when I learned, One of my most popular songs, licensed to Universal in 2013, was only heard by them in 2019 when Karol G performed it on her album Ocean in collaboration with me,” he laments.
When an artist decides to work independently, sometimes the public assumes that this music is not commercial, labels it in that range and even gets angry with the artist if they consider that it goes beyond the framework. undergroundBut Danay Suárez is not afraid of labels: “The genres on this album are suitable for being marketed and danced to. It is not an album with an underground profile, but quite the opposite. It is an album that elevates the international sound to such professional levels that it redefines urban music and exposes significant content.”
Proof of this are the views it has achieved on digital platforms. A little over a week after its release, it surpassed 300,0000 views. streamings organic on Spotify. Compared to other artists of international stature, her audience is small, but loyal and attentive. The rapper’s goal is to have her message heard both in the most remote neighborhood, where people are enjoying a party, and in a nightclub where someone who is considering getting high can find a positive twist in the lyrics.
