Worldwide Angel: Bad Gyal

Bad Gyal burst onto the scene with “PAI,” a Catalan-sung cover of Rihanna’s “Work.” But now, between her debut album, La Joia, and warily delving into AI experimentation, the artist is only getting started. We explore in this FRONTPAGE story. When something is suddenly everywhere, it’s the modern condition to assume it’s always been that way. Bad Gyal burst onto the scene in 2016 with “PAI,” a Catalan-sung cover of Rihanna’s “Work,” with a flash both so bright yet so familiar, it was almost impossible to believe it hadn’t been around forever. But her ascent was actually part of a long and winding history of dancehall, reggaeton, and dembow — music that informed Spaniard Alba Farelo since childhood. It took a long time for mainstream culture to catch up to the chart-topping, perreo-leaning genres, which have soundtracked parties across the Caribbean, Latin America, and Hispanic countries for decades. Before some of the biggest names in the biz wisened up to cross-over collaborations (Drake and Bad Bunny, Beyoncé and J Balvin, Madonna and Maluma, to name a few), the beat-heavy music already held strongly on the culture. It’s been eight years since that first video of a baby-faced, short-haired Farelo was released, and, 4.5 million views later, comments praising her brazen songs — about sex, sexuality, lust, and fun — have only continued to roll in, setting the tone for the continuous stream of work she’s released since. Alongside it, she’s built an army of loyal fans who buck against the idea that the type of music Farelo and her contemporaries make (especially other female artists) is anything but empowering.