Quevedo celebrates the Canary Islands with his third album ‘El Baifo’: ​​”I don’t care what they demand of me, they have already demanded a lot of me”

The Canarian artist Pedro Quevedo publishes his third album this Friday, ‘El Baifo,’ a work with which he returns to his island Gran Canaria to “celebrate.”

“I don’t care what they demand of me. They have demanded a lot of things of me, really. People have asked for everything of me. And everything I have done to other people has bothered them. It doesn’t bother me a bit, it’s not going to change my plans at all,” Quevedo responded to Europa Press.

Before the release of the album, the artist has organized a day with a small group of journalists to tour the island where he grew up while he explains, explains and plays ‘El Baifo’ on the speakers of some cars with which he has crossed from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to Gáldar, stopping in Tejeda.

‘El Baifo’ is made up of 14 cuts in which the rhythms of reggaeton, afro, bossa nova or salsa are mixed with the Canarian tradition of timple or conchas majoreras. The artists who appear also talk about their relationship with the islands: together with Elvis Crespo and Tonny Tun Tun, Quevedo chooses the voices of Nueva Línea, Los Gofiones and his friends and frequent collaborators La Pantera, Lucho RK and Juseph.

With this title, the artist plays with the double meaning of the word baifo – in Guanche it is used to refer to the baby goat. In addition, Quevedo would be baptized as the “calf” of the GOAT (‘Greatest of all times’ for its acronym in English, which translated into Spanish literally means goat). “The baifo, the childish, the capricious,” he warns in the first song.

“INEVITABLE COMPARISON” WITH ‘I SHOULD TAKE MORE PHOTOS’ OF BAD BUNNY

The artist has acknowledged that he has already received comparisons with Bad Bunny’s latest work, ‘I should have thrown more photos’, due to the approach to his place of origin and celebration of traditional music. In the case of Bad Bunny, from Puerto Rico.

But Quevedo remembers that already in his debut album, ‘Where I want to be’, he sang about Gran Canaria. “The comparison is inevitable. It makes all the sense in the world, it doesn’t seem crazy to me. Nothing happens either. When something has so much impact, so much strength and is as beautiful as Bad Bunny, it is normal that everything that comes out after it has a similar color,” he assured.

For him that is not a negative thing, and, in fact, he rejects the current “desire” for all artists to be “super geniuses”: mutual inspiration between artists is what has given wings to careers like his.

“I’m not saying it for myself anymore, but it seems that now everyone wants artists to be super geniuses, when artists have been inspired by other artists all their lives. I started making music because I listened to music. I didn’t wake up in my house and say ‘stay…’. It wasn’t born from lying in my bed and saying ‘this is it,'” he explained.

In his case, this path came after listening to “a lot” of artists and music that have made him who he is today. “I have built a sound based on that. It’s cool that artists are inspired by others, as long as they don’t do the same thing,” he noted.

For this reason, he recognizes that Bad Bunny is an inspiration for “everything”, from the first moment he used ‘autotune’. “Everything he does inspires me, it’s not this album. I’ve been inspired by him since the first time he turned on ‘autotune’. It’s inevitable, but whoever wants to understand it, will understand it and whoever doesn’t, will go to Twitter to cry,” he said.

“I HAVE A VERY UNIQUE VISION OF DOING THINGS”

“I consider that I have a very unique way of doing things. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but unique. It’s my vision of things, my way of writing, my voice. Everything makes it quite unique,” he explained.

If in his first album ‘Where I want to be’ he tried to “understand where his career was at” in a “a little more pretentious” way and in the second, ‘Buenas noche’, the artist reggaetonized his new way of life, in ‘El Baifo’ he cuts off that “inertia” and searches for his personal need: “To celebrate at home again.”

Thus, he explained that the two previous albums were born to try to understand what he needed, but now he is getting rid of “expectations.” “It’s the moment when I least have to defend anything, because the album is who I am,” he says.

‘El Baifo’ began to take shape during the tour of his previous work, and although the first recordings and ideas were made outside his island – in Costa Rica, Puerto Rico or Ibiza -, he has spent the last five months finishing it in Gran Canaria. “There is a part written from afar and it shows in the nostalgia of things,” he explained.

During the day with the press, followers stop him several times on the street to greet him and ask for photos. The artist agrees and later explains that it is where it happens most, but with less “effusiveness.”

“I’m more relaxed here and I’m less infected by everything in the industry. I’m more on my own. (I don’t want to be infected) by the times, the standards that it seems you have to have to reach certain places. Here I have no one to talk to about that and I’m grateful for that. I don’t know about half of the things, there are two worlds,” he noted.

This return to the island has allowed him to put music on a “secondary” level and now he sees important things “much clearer.” “When I am more involved, the people I surround myself with and the conversations are more linked to everything that has to do with music. And here it is something secondary. Music is my ‘hobby’ and my job, both. But in truth it is secondary in my life, in the sense that there are more important things. From here I see it much clearer,” he explains.

“THE ALBUM IS NOT FOLKLORE, IT IS NOT A FOLÍA ALBUM”

“The album is not folklore, I haven’t gone super ‘deep’ or anything. It’s Afro, reggaeton… It’s not a folía album. But it represents well the young kids of our age, our mentality, how we grow, how we live, what it means to go out, what it means to return,” defends the artist.

Despite not having the intention of being a folía, as Quevedo himself explains, in this third album he has united many elements of the Canarian tradition, beyond the various references he makes in his lyrics.

From the young Tenerife orchestra of artists Nueva Línea to the legendary popular music group Los Gofiones, the artist has surrounded himself with new and old generations of island musicians. In several songs – ‘El Baifo’ or ‘Al golpito’ – the melody uses the timple, a plucked string instrument that in this case is played by Hirahi Afonso.

Precisely, in the festive cut that gives the work its name, Quevedo interpolates a traditional Canarian folklore song that always plays on May 30, Canary Islands Day. “I live in an archipelago where they play the drum,” sings the artist, who ends by asking not to leave “the land where mom was born.” In ‘Neither drunk’, he directly offers a festival song for carnivals.

THE CURRENT SUCCESS OF CANARY ARTISTS IS “HEREDITARY”

Quevedo is one of the youngest generation of Canarian urban artists who have been dominating the national and international charts since 2021. Now the presence of islanders is increasingly evident. The singer explains it by ensuring that although there are “very different” projects from each other, they support each other because they are from the same place.

“It is a work that comes from a long time ago. The success that is happening now is hereditary. It comes from a generation that suddenly burst onto the scene. There has been a lot of work in many generations for my generation to arrive and break one more door,” he explained, highlighting names such as Cruz Cafuné, Maikel Delacalle, Ptazeta or Abhir.

“There have been many years of people breaking down doors until a time has come when, with the Internet, (…) it is now a chain. God willing there will be no end,” he concluded.