{"id":816237,"date":"2026-07-21T11:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T11:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/816237\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T11:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T11:29:08","slug":"lido-pimienta-caribenya-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/816237\/","title":{"rendered":"Lido Pimienta: Caribenya Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lido Pimienta<\/a> has never settled for silence. Since her Polaris Prize\u2013winning album La Papessa came out in 2016, she\u2019s brought meditations on anti-racism, colonialism, and feminism to every medium she touches, whether it\u2019s singing, sculpting, painting, or writing for television: ceramics and textiles that carry Afro-Colombian and Indigenous identity into gallery spaces, a television show that smuggles hard conversations into variety-show comedy, and a trailblazing compositional credit for the New York City Ballet\u2014the first score in the company\u2019s history by a woman of color, let alone one who makes no secret of where she stands. Comparisons to artists like Bj\u00f6rk<\/a> and Natalia Lafourcade<\/a> aside, Pimienta\u2019s star is very much her own.<\/p>\n

Pursuing themes explored on the 2025 orchestral suite La Belleza, Pimienta\u2019s latest release, Caribenya, turns the page to brazenly direct songwriting. With cumbia as her banner and production by Argentine composer Chancha V\u00eda Circuito, Mexican cumbia collective Turbo Sonidero, and Persian-British producer Arrabalero of Grupo Jejeje, Pimienta adds another chapter to the ongoing love letter to her native Colombia. There are bullerengue-inspired vocals and thumping percussion, but also forward-thinking gambits\u2014electro cumbia rebajada and synthy melodies\u2014that draw a connective thread between traditional music and new forms of expression. Rather than restricting her vision of what she once described<\/a> as \u201cthe Caribbean sublime\u201d to the nine movements of La Belleza, Caribenya stands as both its natural companion and a new world of its own, and with it, Pimienta captures Caribbean music\u2019s full spectrum without ever needing to settle on one style.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

That range also applies to the album\u2019s lyrics. In songs like \u201cT\u00f3xica\u201d and \u201cTalento,\u201d Pimienta turns her sharp tongue inward and outward, describing a toxic friendship in the first and her own self-doubt in the latter. As ruthless and unadorned as these songs are, they carry a hypnotic effect\u2014as if sitting with hate long enough to put it on record is itself a form of forgiveness and healing. Pimienta is at her best when she turns uncomfortable truths into candid lyrics, reminding us that a decorated career, motherhood, and worldwide recognition don\u2019t make you safe from self-doubt, energy vampires, or the uglier feelings that come with being human. But against that darkness sits her ability to let go: For every verse that settles a score comes a prayer and a wish for renewal, and her versatile singing gives those wishes both fragility and strength.<\/p>\n

Where those songs commune with darkness, \u201cLib\u00e9lula\u201d and \u201cHoy Por T\u00ed\u201d turn toward light and solidarity. Combining airy synth textures, hand percussion, and a subtle pulse of bamboo flutes, \u201cLib\u00e9lula\u201d speaks of freedom, pairing images of the sea with a dreamlike figure\u2014a Caribbean princess embodied in duet by Pimienta and nonbinary Puerto Rican singer Ana Macho. A spoken-word verse by Macho elevates the track further; carefree rhymes that honor self-reliance and invoke Yoruba orisha Yemay\u00e1 epitomize Latin diasporic songwriting at its best. Joining forces with pancultural pop star Nelly Furtado<\/a>, \u201cHoy Por Ti\u201d is built on a relentless, almost martial beat\u2014darkwave-like synth flourishes punctuate flawless percussion by Canadian artist Brandon Valdivia, while layered vocals from Pimienta and Furtado add warmth and weight. Furtado\u2019s familiar tone grounds the track even as Pimienta pushes it toward a victorious peak, both artists sharing the same gift: the ability to shift from reflective to fierce in a single beat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lido Pimienta has never settled for silence. Since her Polaris Prize\u2013winning album La Papessa came out in 2016,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[342,49,48,75,343],"class_list":["post-816237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}