Lapili: "Jamaica helped empower me because being fat there is the model of beauty"

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Perhaps hearing only her stage name many people do not place her, but what if I told you that Lapili is the interpreter of Eat me the doughnut? María del Pilar Robles Pérez (Ciudad Real, 1994) has been fighting against the meme stereotype that was hooked on her figure after triumphing with the viral song on X Factor. An end that he has achieved with effort and a lot of work inside and outside Spain.

She says that she came to the program completely on the bounce when she was studying textile art and giving dance classes in Andalusia. One day he met Alejandro -aka King Giraffe- and they formed Glitch Gyals. They threw themselves into performances until they were contacted from television. Then everything exploded. "I arrived fortuitously and without even thinking about what I was doing. And then I stop and say, 'Wait, I've always wanted this,'" she says.

He is passing through Madrid to present his first studio album, Piligrossa. An album and, at the same time, a story where he talks about empowerment and the feminine with a very personal look between African and Latin rhythms. La Mancha opens in channel as soon as the interview begins. "I came from an environment and social pressure that had always told me I can't make music. And I believed it. At that point I decide to stop, travel to Ghana, to London, work with other artists and start learning to make music from the beginning. That's where my work comes from," he says. And so begins his new story.

What is the idea of the album? What do you want to count on him? It is an album and at the same time in his story. We've recorded interludes that go between each song and when you listen to everything from start to finish you hear a complete story. In short: it's me traveling back in time to see the three-year-old girl who has been told she can't do this to say 'wait a bit and don't listen to what they tell you'. Who told you you couldn't? The family, society, my teachers... If you have never seen a fat woman on stage, in a magazine or on television, then automatically your mind tells you that if you want to do any of those jobs you can not be fat. And, if you're fat, you can't access that. It is like that and there is no room for anything else. It would have helped me a lot to have a reference when I was a little Spanish woman who made music. Someone I can look to. Luckily I've had others, I've been a big fan of Missy Elliott and other artists, all black. This project also speaks a lot about that, about how I have given myself what I have needed and I have become that reference. You were a dance teacher, in that environment there was no criticism of weight? I taught dancehall and the Jamaican dancers who invented it are mostly fat. The beauty model there is to be fat. Another thing that helped me a lot to empower myself was watching documentaries from Jamaica. There is one of the fashion week where a lot of skinny women come out obsessed with being fat to be attractive and take the pills they give to chickens to fatten them. It's very heavy and very sad. In the end it depends on what culture you are in but there is always a social and beauty pressure towards women. Barbarities are done in all parts of the world and we are wasting time doing things to destroy ourselves for wanting to be accepted. That in your youth there were not yet social networks like Instagram, which can lead to a lot of aesthetic pressure. It can be worse but you can also access more things. For me to see Lizzo or Yseult, divine, fat women, is incredible. Obviously in social networks there are more people who can put you to look, but if you have grown up in a place where they call you fat for wearing tight leggings you do not care. Honestly, it's the same argument all the time, I don't care if it comes from one person or 500. The fatphobia now is still the same as when I was little. Have you ever been told that by taking pride you encourage fatphobia? The only thing that happens to these people is that they are fat phobic and they need to seek to put hatred in you. Have you seen them complaining about a model fainting in the middle of the catwalk? They only complain about fat women. If you haven't had the experience of being a fat person, of being judged for being a fat person, of being marginalized for being a fat person, you can't talk about it. Like me, I can't talk about racism because I'm not black. It's like that. You have to listen to the people who have lived that, empathize and stop discrediting the arguments.What is the moment in which you realize, look, yes I can? To be honest, it has been now. I have been doing these things for a while, but doing it with fear. Now that's when I said: we're on this. That is, somehow you forced yourself to show that confidence from the outside without believing it at all. It's that I access the music fortuitously and I'm automatically labeled as a meme thing.. When you have grown up hearing so many years the 'you are not valid, you are not good' in the end that is within you. And on top of that, something happens so you take out a song like Muslona, it comes out in prime time, and in two days it has two million reproductions. It is that, let's see, a little kindness. I don't think people talked to their colleague with their first song like they talked to me. It is true that perhaps your image remained linked to the meme. But I have to do what I want because that's what I'm an artist for. Whether people are basic or not is up to them. If a person consumes Mediaset and the three basic things that they put on TV or the algorithm, then obviously you are going to stay in that. I work a lot in Ghana, for example, and Spotify Music I think came five years ago or so when Wizkid started making collaborations with Drake. I knew very well what was going on TV at the time and it wasn't very difficult to continue making songs like that. It would have taken me a lot more money and a lot more impact. But I'm not that and that's not what I want to do. For me the most important thing is to be honest with myself. You are an independent artist, but you told in an interview that from the industry you were offered a contract as long as you fulfilled some canonsOf course, of a cute girl who sings and is good within what is considered here. But that doesn't make sense to me because to be a thing that already exists and commercial... What do I know, I already lived that, although from another point, and it is not my intention to be in that. And what are you looking for with this new music? I seek to heal myself, and I have succeeded. Obviously I'm still in a very long process, but in these last two years with therapy and thanks to making this album I have healed from a lot of things. Now that you can say 'I'm a singer', what does your family think? They are very, very proud and I can say that I have a lot of support. I understand that at first denials were a way to protect you. It was fear, of course. But they don't do it so much to protect you as they do to protect themselves. They probably also said no to one thing they wanted to do and that carries over. Of all that you have achieved, what do you choose? With my peace of mind. I have it very clear. What has been the hardest? Trust me truly. To be at the point of saying: yes, okay. And what do you regret? Well, I regret letting myself be trampled on and giving a lot to people who were very empty. Besides physique, does the term fat carry anything else? Sure, it's not just the physical. In Spain the word fat has not been used only to define the physical. I think it has rarely been used for that but is used as an insult to women. Whether you are or you are not. We have been educated in a way that is important how a woman looks, how she looks, to be someone in life. It is a way of denigrating her. How important are the terms to you? You have a song called 'La Manada' in which, somehow, you appropriate it to give it a new meaning. Yes, and when I did it I didn't realize it. It was a time when I was super lost and writing it I felt that what made me connect with me was my group of friends. It has a lot to do with she-wolfs, with how their herd works in the animal kingdom. It has a lot of symbolism. I think it is time for that term to belong to us because it is very beautiful and it is not fair that it belongs to scoundrels. Do you understand music without a message? Yes, of course. What's more, I hear a lot of m.use without message. There has to be music for everything even though my way of doing it has more to do with healing myself and expanding that energy. Adele had a very strong weight loss and she was somehow a reference for many girls, with the physical change do you think that those people fail in some way? I believe that the responsibility does not have to be on her and that she should not be judged. There is a feeling of abandonment, because he has abandoned us, but it is not his fault. Have you thought that a physical change could condition your career? Of course, but aesthetics conditions us all the time. Or are there no women in the industry who do fit into the normative canon and have pressure? They have it the same. It's just as hardcore because they're required to maintain that figure all the time. Look at what happened with Berta Vazquez. It's business as usual and it only has to do with women. For Beyoncé or Rihanna to be valued a show there have to be eight changes of clothes, dancers, they have to throw themselves on the floor ... Then you get two rappers in tracksuits who, hopefully, have showered that day. And I say this because I have lived it.

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