Bad Gyal Talks About New Album ‘Mas Cara,’ Culture Controversy, More

Alba Farelo, the Catalan artist known as Bad Gyal, was inspired by underground producers and late-night club vibes when she began releasing left-of-center mixtapes in 2016. “It was always about finding a type of energy, about linking up with people whose work you like, and later just letting things happen,” she says. As she cranked out viral hits with abstract experimentalists like Florentino and El Guincho, she was guided by intuition — and it turned out, there was a hungry fan base who loved what she was doing. They latched on to projects like Slow Wine Mixtape and Worldwide Angel, eager to see more.

Over the next few years, Farelo, 29, became a mainstay on the festival circuit and a go-to collaborator across the Spanish-language industry, working with megastars like Puerto Rican rapper Myke Towers and Dominican party-starter Tokischa. In 2019, she clinched a deal with Interscope, and in 2024, she finally released her long-awaited debut album, La Joia, a project teeming with bright electronic and reggaeton sounds. 

But for Farelo, a restless artist who describes herself as endlessly curious, that was just the beginning. Over the past three years, she’s been hard at work on Más Cara, an LP that feels like an elevated, expansive version of all the things she’s been good at in the past. She landed on the name — which translates to “more expensive” — as she hammered out the first track, which is all about leveling up and taking a step forward. “So much came from asking, ‘Who am I? What’s the music that I love? What’s the world I’m shaping? What are the codes and the language I’m building?’” she says.

Her inquiry led to the album’s wide-ranging production as it bounces from EDM beats to skittish merengue to even konpa, a smooth dance rhythm from Haiti. Farelo had been obsessed with the style and started testing it out on a song called “Última Noche.” As she was putting it together, she says, she kept envisioning how the song might sound with Puerto Rican-Dominican singer Ozuna. “He didn’t know where [this style of music] was from but he fell in love, so I explained it to him,” she says. He came to the studio at her invitation and helped bring the vision together. She calls the whole experience “surreal.” “I never thought I could make a song with Ozuna, and especially with something he didn’t know and that he liked so much.” 

Farelo knows that lots of people might not understand or accept her sonic wayfaring into other styles and cultures. She says she’s had to engage those questions from the second she picked her artist name, a nod to the Caribbean genres that inspired her. “It’s not that I didn’t respect that before or wasn’t conscience of my privilege as a white European, but being confronted with taught me so much,” she says. “I had to live through that in the beginning of my career, that [conversation] of ‘These cultures have been oppressed, and they don’t have the same history as you.’ It was a huge lesson, and it gave me a lot of consciousness. It made me learn a lot.” 

Her approach, she says, has been from a place of respecting the music and loving it as a fan. She says she’s been heartened that songs like “Última Noche” have been embraced by fans in Haiti, many of whom have posted their own cover versions online in Creole and sent her supportive messages. She’s also been collaborating with artists from the country. “I feel like this could sound too ‘happy flowers’ and maybe it’s something I’ve put in my own head, but I do think that when you do things from a place of real love and passion for them and because you really care, that energy comes across.”

One of the best moments from the album, she says, came when she started recorded a few reggaeton tracks in Puerto Rico. (She recently “Choque,” a smash with genre veteran Chencho Corleone.) As they were coming up with tracks, the legendary production duo Luny Tunes pulled up to the studio to help. “Because they were there, all these other OGs from the reggaeton world started coming through,” Farelo remembers. “Between takes, they’d tell me a million stories from back in the day and I was just like, ‘I’m a student in class. Teach me and guide me.’ … Truly, to find myself in that context is an experience I’m never going to forget.”

Her next step is to get the album ready and start rehearsing major shows in Spain, where fans have been counting down. “I feel like people are loving it,” she says. But she’s not thinking too much about what happens after: The whole album has brought her a new sense of confidence, she explains, and she feels like the journey itself was worth it. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with this album, if it’ll go platinum, if it will or won’t, or what the hell is going to happen,” she says. “I don’t know, but the experiences this album has left me with — and [being able] to say ‘Look, girl, how far you’ve come and what life has given you’ — is more than enough.”