It took time, but Leslie Grace has found her own sound and is back with her first original album in more than a decade, Amor, Quién Eres?, a 14-track bilingual project that showcases her artistic and personal evolution.
Released today (May 1) under Sony Music Latin, the set — which includes singles like “Ayayay” and “Inmerecido” — blends her Latin pop foundation with bachata textures and R&B influences for tracks like “El Plan,” “Miedo” and “Tú Supiste?,” the latter featuring the duo Martox.
The release coincides with Grace’s multiple acting projects. Alongside her music career, she has built a presence on screen since her 2021 debut as Nina Rosario on In the Heights — the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning Broadway musical, directed by Jon M. Chu.
“It’s been a beautiful journey since then to go back to the basics on my music. Music is the foundation and came first, obviously, but when acting became a thing with In the Heights, and I started to get into that craft a bit more, integrating that into my art, that part of my career became a new way for me to learn how I wanted my collaboration within music to feel,” Grace tells Billboard Español. “It was almost like an initiation for me in stepping up and maturing in the way that I was approaching my music because I started so young, so I never really had a chance to create — it was [mostly] versions of other songs.”
Grace started in music as a child with a Christian album. In 2012, she rose to fame with a bilingual version of The Shirelles’ classic “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” titled “Will U Still Love Me Tomorrow” and set to a bachata rhythm. The song reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Tropical Airplay chart and No. 3 on Hot Latin Songs. The following year, she released her self-titled album, produced by Sergio George, which peaked at No. 3 on the Top Latin Albums chart and earned a Latin Grammy nomination for best tropical album. She was only 17 years old.
“I’m super proud of and I’m blessed that everyone enjoyed [that music] in their time. But in terms of the creative process of how I experienced creating as an artist, I never really took the time or had the chance to cultivate what that process felt like for me, what my preferred process was and learning that through being inspired by working with people like Lin and Jon and taking things from those film experiences to bring to my process,” she reflects now, at 31.
Since her successful 2013 LP, Grace has released an EP (Lloviendo Estrellas in 2015) and a series of singles (most recently “Como la Primera Vez” with Boza in 2022), but she hadn’t recorded a full album again until now. This time, supported by a diverse team of producers, she sought inspiration from her own experiences: “A lot of good moments, not so fun moments, but mainly, mainly love — love experiences, relationships,” she shares. “And sometimes I would go back in my old journals and find little verses and things that I could expand on, and then they would turn into songs.”
Every song on Amor, Quién Eres? includes a visual component, with individual music videos that, together, will form an “immersive short film,” according to a press release, combining her talents as both a singer and actress. This past March, the artist had prominent roles in two films featured at the SXSW festival: Stages, a Live Nation project directed by Ryan Booth that follows two mid-career musicians who must start over and tour independently; and Campeón Gabacho by Jonás Cuarón, about a young migrant crossing the Rio Grande in search of a better life in the United States.
When asked what she learned about herself during the process of creating her new album, Grace replies, “I discovered that — a lot of times I thought that I didn’t have clarity and really I just needed to exercise the muscle of expressing more of what I knew that I wanted to others and exercise the muscle of just feeling confident enough in my ideas to share and be able to collaborate with the people around me.”
Listen to Amor, Quién Eres? below.
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