C. Tangana turns 30 in July . Nobody likes to turn 30. And C. Tangana still less. So you can apologize that it took you more than a year to accept it and, above all, to see how you could adapt to the certainty that you are getting older. Being a millennial icon who has managed to connect two generations of young people with songs heard a hundred million times delays annoying questions such as: What do I want to be when I grow up?

So he has reached the crisis of the 30s with his homework done. You have drawn your conclusions. You have measured your capabilities. You have established new strategies .

In the movie Parasites there is a scene in which everything begins to break. It is the key moment that any fictional story has. The father asks the son with a seriousness that he had never shown until then: "Do you know what kind of plan never fails?" The son holds his breath. "The plan that never fails is to have no plan." Another silence. "Life never works like this."

C. Tangana always had a plan . It is something that not everyone understands, and that's why nothing happens if it has to be repeated. C. Tangana always had a plan. Admittedly, he went through life with a Clark Gable mustache singing about crying in limo and having gel nail scars, but he's no botarate. Not much, at least. Well, maybe a little, but that was also part of the plan.

His plan resembles the definition of superior intelligence by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, another chronicler of a disappointed, cynical, and hedonistic youth : the ability to hold two opposing views at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Two songs released in the last few weeks kick off his new creative phase , a new phase in a career that began as C. Tangana in 2015, when he adapted his restless rap to Latin trends, trapping the consecration of urban music as new pop and creating some generational hymns such as Bad woman , Crying in the limo , Booty , I shouldn't have kissed you or Before I died with Rosalía, then her romantic partner (she is also co-author of part of the album El mal querer , including Malamente ) . Two new songs , we said: I am never , a self-portrait of her miseries from the point of view of abandoned girlfriend and with some phrases taken from songs by Rosario and Alejandro Sanz (her first number 1 on the Spanish Spotify list); and Guille assassin , who represents the miseries of that selfish and possessive boyfriend from the man's point of view.

The man from Madrid is in Madrid . He has returned home ("home") after two years touring America from top to bottom with success on his heels. Talk quietly on the phone.

How does turning 30 make you feel? I have passed the typical crisis, you start to wonder if at 40 you want to be singing reggaeton on a stage, if you want to rap the lyrics you used to do before, if you want to make yourself more boring and give them to yourself and stop moving people, if you want, I don't know, stop empathizing with young people and start talking to older people, who have less incentive, who are not so fresh and do not accept changes. You are overwhelmed by those kinds of questions about what you are going to do with your life. But spending two years like this has helped me to prepare myself now. I have come to the moment with clear ideas about what I want to do from now on. I see it as a change of work, I see the 30s as a new stage in which I can do better things. With the pandemic and the confinement, is different music made? Does it change the starting point completely or do you try not to affect it? Yes, of course it affects me, in fact I try to affect it, I want to get involved with what I feel and what is happening in the world. One of the reasons we have released I am never a major single in my career was because I believed I was up to the challenge. Sometimes people think that I do things for marketing, partly because at first I said that so that it would be understood that I was not a fool who did not know anything, but that I could really enter the industry, but then that idea has become become too associated with me. People always talk about marketing, but I see myself as an artist who is stuck to his time, who is more insightful, but not to take advantage of it economically but because artists must talk about their time and be in the present time. that you are trying to make this situation affect you and recently you wrote on Twitter "I see this generation making us strong, denying any kind of sensitivity". The values ​​of using emotions coldly or the things we say in songs or that we sing in clubs, the movies we watch, the type of person we want to be, is someone non-emotional, or if he is, he is in a frivolous way. In my generation we make super frivolous use of emotions and we are used to repeating to ourselves that we do not fall in love, that we do not care for another, that we only think of ourselves. And look at us now, we are all locked up at home, wanting to see each other, applauding each other, it makes me want to say to my generation, "my goodness, you are doing nothing but the asshole." My generation is going to be smarter after all this, let's get rid of nonsense.

My generation is going to be smarter after all this, let's get rid of nonsense

The trend towards individualism, which has increased for decades, has now been reversed. Selfish attitudes have never been so frowned upon in this situation where solidarity and collective effort are called for, depending on how you understand individualism. If you understand it as an ultimate stronghold of the individual and that what is required now is the commitment of the individual, in reality it has more value than ever because the State cannot take care of everyone as a community. The State asks us to respect the new rules, and what we are achieving we do as the sum of what each one in particular is doing. Right now the individual is more important than ever because there are not enough police to watch over each one. It is trusted that each one of us will do what he has to do ... What is morally correct, what would be good behavior. I think it is a good time to rethink what it is to be an individual and what is the action that transcends the social, if it is the action of a State or the sum that each individual does. This applied to society and decision-making seems obvious to me, it is more interesting that there is only one person making the decisions, which is also a lie, normally it is the sum of all the particular decisions we all make that tells us what We are, and that is what is happening now. What makes you think of the concept of 'new normality'? I am very afraid. It makes me think of a movie in a dystopian future in which we are all controlled. Sometimes you feel the fear and worry of the whole situation, and you want to give your support to all the people who are fighting and you feel that we are doing something real for the community, and you want to behave well and be within what is there. what to do. But it is also true that I had never been afraid to go out, that the police would stop me because the State has said so. Everyone, if he is a little honest with himself, is torn between these two feelings: either we live a scary movie in which we are absolutely controlled or we are heroes for everything we are achieving. The term new normality goes more for the horror movie. Are these concerns going to be appreciated in your new songs? Yes, next week I will release a completely rare EP, like the times we are living, which speaks to other perspectives and points of view. It has four songs that are four rarities. For me it is very special. 'I am never' was an instant success. You wrote on Twitter: "It is giving me more joy than the sadness I had." What sadnesses did you have? Well, it's a sad song. I think it is the first time that, artistically, I recognize my mistakes and sing them, and say things that are like a list of my sins. They are sad things, although it is convenient to say them. It is the portrait of a carefree, lively and selfish boy. Was that what you were before or in part you still are? I always try to make the particular something general. These are things that have been said to me, that may be more or less true, and that I translate into something that can be in a song and become part of the culture of the whole world and that people sing. There's always a little bit of fiction about it.

I have done many things that have helped and favored the position of women

People always say that I am marketing, but I see myself as an artist stuck to his time

Are urban musics still the pop of this generation, the real voice of youth? Culturally, I think that is where everything is understood. Clothes, aesthetics ... everything. And in music in particular it is where everything new comes out. Urban music is popular music from all over the world now and it will take a long time for there to be a new paradigm that does not owe much to that, which comes mainly from hip hop, when it becomes the predominant music in the US and Everyone tries to appropriate that culture by combining it with pop. What have you learned from your experience in the Latin market? What I have learned the most is to want to have your own point of view, not to have a perspective that any, but unique perspective. The farther I go from the place where I started, the more I want to claim my origin. I like it, I like to feel Madrid, I like to talk to the ej that , I like to have a perspective of my own from which I can do things that others cannot. One of the consequences of the pandemic is a reinforcement of nationalist sentiment and of the power of the State. How about that? It scares me. In general I am afraid that all crises are exploited by power structures to become stronger and implant some ideas that they could not otherwise. The worst of the crises at the political level is what happens next, how the world is configured from there. That is more dangerous than the crisis itself. And on the rise of nationalisms, in Spain they will try to use people's pain to become stronger, as they almost always do. Nationalism is a romantic feeling and lives on emotions. They will use the pain of illness and the panic of confinement and crisis to take power for the hearts of the people. I feel it is dangerous. How we get out of this is going to be critical, not only Spain. You say "they will use". Who are you thinking of? Any politician who uses people's feelings towards their community to gain more power. All of them, instead of talking about managing a country or about certain values, are dedicated to using feelings such as disappointment, despair, the pain of loss and fear of the future to put a flag ahead of them and say "look, this is what you believe, now give me the power and we will crush the other. " That can be done with a lot of flags and slogans, but in general they tend to be nationalists. What is your opinion of Spanish politics? I think it would be an interesting time for there to be some sense that we are all together, but, well That is already a fiction in Spain, we will never see that the whole Parliament agrees on certain things and that it is heading towards one point because it is good for everyone, as in the current situation. It would be so necessary for them to sit down to make a series of joint decisions and give us the international feeling that we are a politically responsible country and not a lot of people trying to keep their job for four more years.

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