Leslie Grace releases new album "Amor, Quien Eres?" after a decade away from music

Leslie Grace released her bilingual album "Amor, Quien Eres?" in May, her first full-length record in more than ten years, and she discussed it on the debut episode of "The De Los Podcast," hosted by Fidel Martinez and Suzy Exposito.

Exposito described the album's sound as "tropical eleganza," a marked shift from the Christian music Grace recorded as a teenager and from her Latin Grammy-nominated self-titled album in 2013. "The biggest learning has been how to protect my creative space, while I grow it and discover at the same time," Grace, 31, told the podcast.

Grace's return to music comes alongside a film career that has had both breakthroughs and setbacks. She discussed the online backlash that greeted the 2021 movie musical "In the Heights" over the lack of Afro-Latino actors in its cast, calling the underlying issue "a conversation we haven't touched on as much" in Latino film and saying she was glad it pushed the industry toward telling more varied stories.

Grace also revisited the cancellation of "Batgirl," the DC film in which she starred as the title character before Warner Bros. shelved it during postproduction for financial reasons rather than releasing it on HBO Max as planned. "It was disappointing because we knew the film that we were making," Grace said, adding that support from other creatives helped her keep working through it.

Since then, Grace has leaned into independent film, starring in "In the Summers," winner of a grand jury prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, and in this year's "Stages" and "Campeon Gabacho," which premiered at South by Southwest. Her return to Latin music with "Amor, Quien Eres?" sits alongside that film work rather than replacing it, and the album now joins the release calendar among 2026's comeback records.