TRACKADEMIA is STATIC’s weekly track review column, covering everything from the underrepresented to the overwhelming.
Unfortunate! Though LUDMILLA sets up Emilia, Latto, and herself for success on “BOTA”, she’s the only one that follows through.
A collaboration between a Brazilian iconoclast like LUDMILLA, one of Latin pop’s biggest ladies of the moment, and a Grammy-nominated US rapper is a promising selling point. Emilia, the Latin pop star in question, has dabbled in a multitude of genres proximal to her home base, with varying success. Latto might not have as many sounds in her repertoire, but alongside two more seasoned performers, the collaboration could’ve demonstrated a new versatility. These are, to be clear, hypotheticals. And in this hypothetical LUDMILLA, Emilia and Latto manage to meld their own styles (a pretty rudimentary goal of any collaboration) onto a nasty, nasty beat without white-knuckling their usual sounds.
They’re set up well – LUDMILLA’s verses are effortless and sexy, comfortable on the heavy funk beat more akin to her early work. Then LUDMILLA regretfully leaves us. When it’s not a mess, the first half of Emilia’s verse is just forgettable. Her strongest moments come when she actually moves with the beat, mirroring the linguistic rhythms of Brazilian Portuguese in Spanish. If only that moment lasted for more than four lines. The dissonance is strange given this isn’t Emilia’s first collaboration with LUDMILLA. The two achieved a delightful synthesis of funk carioca, EDM, and Latin pop on the 2022 track “no_se_ve.mp3” – where there’s a fluidity that the “BOCA” collaborators just aren’t able to recreate.
Latto’s verse inspires very little ass-shaking but in a small mercy, her verse starts as soon as it ends – maybe someone heard it before release and trimmed the fat. The American rapper is completely out of place and her depth on the track, stumbling her way through upbeats and Nicki Minaj references.
Both Emilia and Latto’s verses are clearly meant to express that Brazilian spirit is less about birthright than it is about embodying an essence. Regrettably for them, communicating that sentiment is doomed for failure if one clearly has no understanding of what that essence may be. LUDMILLA may be hypnotizing in “BOTA”, but little of note happens past the 40 second mark. Save yourself the trouble and listen to basically anything else in her repertoire instead.
Listen to “Bota” here: