Yendry did not rush into making her debut album, “Como Agua,” which arrived in September. It has been a full 14 years since her first brush with fame, and she has been releasing singles since 2019 that have racked up tens of millions of plays.
But for Yendry, making an album-length statement was “a whole new journey,” she said in a video interview from her home in Los Angeles, where the cover photo from Björk’s album “Post” has a proud place on a wall.
“Making singles is way easier because you just make a song, you like it, you release it,” Yendry said. “An album — you overthink it, obviously, and you have more space for the doubts. I let the doubts in, because I take this very seriously.”
“Como Agua” (“Like Water”), is an inviting, era-hopping statement of a complex 21st-century identity. Yendry Fiorentino, 33, was born in the Dominican Republic, grew up in Italy and now lives in Los Angeles. Since childhood, she has navigated what it is to be an outsider.
On “Como Agua,” Yendry sings and raps in songs that draw on Caribbean styles — merengue, bolero, reggae — but also fearlessly tweak them as computerized pop. The lyrics explore her roles as a Latina, a daughter, an expatriate, a partner and an ambitious artist. In “Sin Fronteras” (“Without Borders”), she sings, “I’m heading there, where the wind takes me / Where I can hear a voice that loves me / In a new place that has no borders.”
Yendry was born to a single mother in Santo Domingo who emigrated to Turin, Italy, to become a caregiver and later married an Italian man: “Mario, my angel,” Yendry calls him. As a child, Yendry loved to sing for people. “I was literally just a jukebox,” she said. “People would be like, ‘Can you sing that song for me?’ And I would be, like, ‘ah, ah … ” Her voice rose into a melody.
She soaked up music from all over. During an interview she mentioned Ella Fitzgerald, Beyonce, Björk, Aphex Twin, Gotye, Feist, Cat Power, Timbaland, Sílvia Pérez Cruz and Raffaella Carrà, among many others.
Yendry wasn’t aiming for a pop career. Hearing the operatic delivery of Italian pop singers, She was convinced that her more intimate voice was inadequate. “When I started singing, I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t have it. I don’t know how to do that.’ I think me singing gently comes from me finding my own voice instead of trying to imitate what I grew up with. That’s the way I just sing naturally.”
In 2012, a shy high-school friend begged Yendry to come along to auditions for the Italian version of the reality competition show “X Factor.” Yendry ended up performing on TV. “That changed my perspective on how this could become a job for real,” she said. “I didn’t like it. To me it was pure entertainment and it had nothing to do with music.”
Though she didn’t win, Yendry advanced far enough to garner a contract with Sony Music Italy. She recorded one single, but refused to promote it. “When you have that kind of opportunity, everyone is like, ‘Wow, you should do it.’ But I really didn’t feel the song, and I knew from a very young age that I don’t want to sing anything I don’t relate to. I was mad. I was like a rebel teenager. I was, like, ‘I don’t even know why I recorded this.’”
The contract was terminated, and Yendry enrolled at the University of Turin to study philosophy. She also sang for two bands. Materianera, an Italian trip-hop band with lyrics in English, released an album, “Abyss,” in 2018 before breaking up. Her other group played manouche, Django-Reinhardt-style gypsy jazz.
Yendry didn’t have time for both music and college; after a few months, she dropped out. She also started working steadily as a wedding singer, a grueling but instructive apprenticeship. “I was singing for like three hours, four hours,” she said. “That’s when I realized, ‘Oh, I actually want to do this properly.’”
When Yendry brought a Peruvian song to her gypsy jazz band, it was their first song in Spanish. “I got goose bumps,” she recalled. “Everyone in the room did. They all looked at me when I finished and they were like, ‘Why are you not singing in Spanish?’”
Returning to her first language unlocked Yendry’s songwriting and solo career. Her first singles were “Barrio,” a flamenco-tinged song about a brief visit to the neighborhood of an abusive ex, that insisted, “I’m not afraid of you any more,” and “Nena,” which drew on a childhood separation.
Yendry was 2 years old when her mother moved to Italy, leaving her in the care of her grandmother and aunts in the Dominican Republic for an unhappy year before reclaiming her. “Nena” doesn’t complain; it imagines the mother’s anxious, loving perspective. “It’s about an immigrant mother away from her daughter, sending her blessings,” Yendry said. “I think a big part of the Latin community related to it.”
A video performance of “Nena” for the “Colors” internet series went viral to an international audience. It brought her fans including Cat Power, the indie-rock songwriter Chan Marshall, who quickly reposted the song; after Yendry thanked her, they became friends. “She just sounds so natural and straight from the heart,” Marshall said in an interview from her home in Florida. “You just know, by your ear, that she’s telling the truth. When she’s singing you can just hear her heart singing. You can hear her compassion, and you can hear her sense of fun.”
Marshall added, “She is super kind, super sweet, but she’s tough, you know? She’s a very strong young woman and she works really hard. I’m so proud of her for standing her ground and making sure that she delivers the art that she wants.”
With the momentum from her singles, in 2021 Yendry spent time in Miami to start work on a debut album. She was buffeted by advice to try trendy beats. “I never clicked with Miami,” she said. “I feel like my roots are not there.”
For the next few years she labored diligently to build an audience: performing constantly, posting on social media, attending high-profile fashion events and releasing singles, including collaborations with the Colombian reggaeton singer J Balvin and the Jamaican reggae scion Damian Marley. “Ya” (“Already”), a solo single in 2021, found a place on Barack Obama’s yearly playlist.
All the activity caught up with her in July 2023. Yendry had nodules on her vocal cords; she was “overworked, over-traveled,” she said. “I went to a few doctors and everyone told me the same: ‘Oh, you’re burned out.’ And I was like, ‘What is that? I’ve worked seven days a week my whole life.’”
A therapist convinced her that she needed rest. “So I took a full month of not doing anything, because I was too depressed to do anything,” she said, adding that she did not speak during 15 days of vocal rest.
“That one month gave me clarity again,” she said. Yendry fired her manager and moved to Los Angeles, despite misgivings. At the time, she said, she told her therapist, “I fought so hard to build my own identity here in Italy as an Italian, to feel like part of this community. And now I feel like I’m just erasing this whole thing that I’ve been working on for years, just going somewhere else where I’m going to be a stranger again. I’m going to be the outsider again.”
Though she resumed touring, Yendry all but stopped releasing one-off singles. “There’s the pressure of, you know, ‘You need to stay relevant. You need to post. You need to keep going because people are going to forget about you,’” she said. “I said, ‘That’s a risk I’m going to take. Because I want to come back with something that feels good to me.’ I studied artists that I admire, that I love, and they take their time to build their own world.”
“Como Agua” sketches Yendry’s autobiography: from Dominican roots and family reckonings, through memories of Italy, and on to a globe-spanning future. “I made it for myself,” she said. “I hope it translates for others, and I hope others can relate to it. But I really made it for myself.”
The opening track, “La Bendición” (“Blessing”), reaches back to an Afro-Dominican rhythm, palo, to invoke the protection of ancestors. It also backs Yendry with deep-diving synthesizer bass as she raps about her own determination and the power of water that “Changes shapes, transforms itself, crosses continents.” In “No me vuelvo a enamorar” (“I Won’t Fall in Love Again”), she extols the Dominican Republic as her first, best love; it’s a merengue pumped with percussion and horns.
Yendry glances back toward Italy, envisioning the countryside she’s left behind, in “Un dolore raro” (Italian for “A Rare Sorrow”) and in “Amapolas” (“Poppies”).
“Espejo” (“Mirror”) is a quietly intense, deeply personal song about meeting her biological father when she was in her teens. At first they communicated online; relatives bought her a computer and installed internet service. When she was 18, Yendry flew to New York to meet him. “When the day came I saw his eyes / I saw something familiar,” she sings in “Espejo.” “I took his hand and stopped searching for memories we never shared.”
One day in an Amsterdam studio, improvising over a loop of delicate guitar chords, “the song just came to me,” Yendry said. “I didn’t correct anything, I didn’t change it. The vocals are still the vocals of the demo.”
Yendry concludes the album with songs about new beginnings: “Primavera” (“Spring”), which has her repeating the English phrase “now or never,” and “Paloma” (“Dove”), a swinging waltz inspired by her grandmother’s pet name for her. “As I cross lands that do not know me,” she sings, “May I never forget the taste of home.”
Back in 2021, in “Ya,” Yendry declared, “I always get to where I want to go.” Has she gotten there yet? It’s only a debut album, Yendry replied. “This is just the beginning.”
The post Her Singles Made Her a Star. A First Album Took More Work. appeared first on New York Times.
