Becky G opens up on new album "Baraja Bendita"

Becky G sat down with Rolling Stone ahead of the August 14 release of her fifth album, Baraja Bendita, her first on RCA Records. The Latin star, now 29, called the record a Spanglish, genre-bending project that bounces between club bangers, merengue and bachata, and said it caps a healing journey that began with her earlier albums Esquinas and Encuentros. "For a long time, I have expressed my pride for who I am and where I come from," she told the magazine, adding that this record is where she finally owns that pride outright.

Becky G signed her first record deal at 14 and broke through with 2014's single "Shower." Reflecting on her nearly two-decade career, she said, "I feel I'm, like, on my sixth life now as an artist." Baraja Bendita ties together stretches of her catalog, from the brash energy of "Shower" through the tougher persona of her 2019 album Mala Santa to the proud Mexican American voice of her more recent records.

The album's title refers to a deck of cards, a metaphor Becky G said reflects taking control of what you can, even when you cannot control every card you are dealt. Songs on the record include the bilingual club opener "5'5," "EPA" and a duet with Carlos Santana called "Mi Gran Amor," which she said addresses the realities of ICE raids under the Trump administration. She has also worked with groups including the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

Becky G worked on "Mi Gran Amor" with longtime collaborator Edgar Barrera, who also produced Esquinas and has spoken about growing up in a border town himself; she said she wanted to be clear that she sings the song "as a vessel to share these stories," since she cannot fully know what people living through the raids are experiencing. She explored similar ground earlier this year in a Rolling Stone American Icons essay headlined "Immigrants are the Bedrock of our Nation," writing about grandparents who came from nothing in Jalisco, Mexico.

The interview follows a stretch in which Becky G has been visibly tied to Selena Gomez and Karol G, including a recent video with Gomez and Benny Blanco for the song "Te Olvido (La La)," and a Coachella set where she shouted out immigrant communities alongside Karol G. She described Karol G as a friend she has watched grow into her first-ever Latina headlining Coachella set, and said the two lean on each other in an industry that does not always make space for peers to be genuinely supportive.

Baraja Bendita, tracked on the release calendar, arrived August 14, and Becky G is also set to join Karol G for select dates on her TropiTour this year. Full details on how the album performed on release, and what songs stood out, are covered in our review of the finished record.