< For Puerto Rico's Villano Antillano, femininity is a shield — and a superpower

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Puerto Rican rapper Villano Antillano is ready to hit the road this spring. She'll perform her debut album, "La Sustancia X," across Latin America and Europe. Her songs put femininity front and center, and they're breaking barriers in urbano music, as NPR's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento reports.

ISABELLA GOMEZ SARMIENTO, BYLINE: Villano Antillano, the Antillean Villain, opens her record by casting a spell.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRECAUCION, ESTA CANCION ES UN HECHIZO")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping in Spanish).

SARMIENTO: But this is not the start of a quiet, gentle meditation. It's a party fueled by sex, drugs, swagger and gender politics.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRECAUCION, ESTA CANCION ES UN HECHIZO")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping in Spanish).

SARMIENTO: I'm not an artist; I'm a movement, brags the 27-year-old Puerto Rican rapper. It's a bold statement to kick off her first full-length album. But as she's being hailed - the first trans artist to make waves in urbano and with more than 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify - Villano Antillano knows that "La Sustancia X" is less of an introduction and more of a grand entrance.

VILLANO ANTILLANO: I feel like I also have a lot of, like, magic around me to draw from, you know? A lot of excellent music has been made in Puerto Rico.

SARMIENTO: She grew up surrounded by that excellence - mainly salsa, reggaeton and rock en espanol. But when it came time to find a sound of her own, she turned to rap, trap and witty rhyme schemes.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CASCARA DE COCO")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping in Spanish).

In Puerto Rico, we bend language a certain way, and in the Caribbean as a whole, we bend either Spanish or English or whatever language was imposed on us by colonization in very particular ways.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CASCARA DE COCO")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping in Spanish).

SARMIENTO: Villano Antillano came up as an underground rapper in the Puerto Rican scene. She spent nearly three years working on her album, all while releasing carefully crafted collaborations with other queer and women artists like Young Miko, paopao and RaiNao. But last year marked a turning point in Villano's career, especially when she worked with rising Argentinean producer Bizarrap.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BZRP MUSIC SESSIONS #51")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping) I'm on the top shelf. I'm such a bombshell. (Rapping in Spanish).

SARMIENTO: That performance has racked up over 187 million views on YouTube. Shortly after, Bad Bunny, the top streamed artist in the world, invited Villano on stage to perform with him during a show in San Juan. Then a few months ago, Villano released her magnum opus. She says much of the album is a testament to the way that she interacts with her femininity through her creative process. Part of that was starting hormone replacement therapy.

VILLANO ANTILLANO: I feel like I really became a better musician once I took steps that, like, closened (ph) me to my womanhood and my femininity.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUJER (FT. ILE)")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping in Spanish).

SARMIENTO: One of the standout songs on the album, "Mujer," relishes in that connection. It's a collaboration with singer and composer iLe, who's been at the forefront of political protest music in Puerto Rico in recent years.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUJER (FT. ILE)")

ILE: (Rapping in Spanish).

I always like songs that make me want to dance, but at the same time they give me, like, something more.

SARMIENTO: "Mujer" is a feminist rallying cry that centers women as both powerful and threatening. It calls out interpersonal and systemic violence in Puerto Rico. The Human Rights Campaign reported that the island had the highest number of anti-trans fatalities in the U.S. in 2020. And for two years now, Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Pierluisi has declared a state of emergency over gender-based violence.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUJER (FT. ILE)")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in Spanish).

SARMIENTO: The song ends on a somber note - a clip from a rally remembering victims killed in recent years.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUJER (FT. ILE)")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in Spanish).

VILLANO ANTILLANO: These names feel like names until, like, they're just not. They're someone that you actually knew. One of my closest friends was very close with a victim that's in the voice memo. Her name is said, and that touched me particularly because it's not just, like, me seeing it as a horrible news. It's me having to accompany, you know, a person who is going through deep grief.

SARMIENTO: Throughout much of the album, Villano is hardened to the world around her. She says a big part of that is having to navigate life as a woman and as a queer person. You get used to being defensive, to constantly looking out for yourself in the face of danger and hostility. She also knows she's breaking new ground. Music journalist Richard Villegas.

RICHARD VILLEGAS: We need to be up front about the fact that seeing queer and trans people in reggaeton, in trap, in hip-hop can still be seen as a novelty.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEDONISMO")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping in Spanish).

SARMIENTO: Last summer, when Villano shared a kiss on stage with Dominican artist Tokischa, they received vicious homophobic backlash, including death threats. So I ask her if it weighs on her to have to represent an entire community with her platform. Maybe she just wants to have fun and make music that feels good to her. But she says she chooses to see it as liberating.

VILLANO ANTILLANO: If nobody has done what I'm doing, then that means that there are no expectations, and there is no rulebook. I'm just making it as I go along. So you can't tell me how to bring queerness to the table because it's all I know. So I'm going to do what I'm going to do, and I'm going to do it very excellently.

SARMIENTO: And so she celebrates queer tenderness, too. The last song on the album, "Poli," is an ode to polyamory. She tells her lover she cares about him too much to deprive him of connecting with other people.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "POLI")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping in Spanish).

SARMIENTO: Villano will start performing these songs this month in Texas, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and later on in Spain. She says she's most excited to "La Sustancia X" with her fans in person.

VILLANO ANTILLANO: It's not just kids at a festival who know a song or two of me. It's kids who are, like, seeing an artist that represents them and that kind of, like, makes them feel like they can really aspire to be anything they want.

SARMIENTO: Like Villano Antillano, they can be confident in who they are and make sure everybody else knows it, too.

Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NENA MALA")

VILLANO ANTILLANO: (Rapping in Spanish).

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