La Doña is a San Francisco singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose music brings together the ranchera music of her family's band she grew up playing in and the Bay Area rap that she grew up immersed in. Appropriately, her songs are a distinct mixture of sounds, regional influences, and perspectives, and "Le Lo Lai," her latest is no exception.
On the song, she sings in Spanish and English, flipping a classic patriarchical rap narrative on its head. The video, directed by La Doña and her childhood friend and collaborator Naomi Garcia, finds La Doña telling stories of her sexual conquests over men on the stoop surrounded by her girls.
"'Le Lo Lai is' a reimagined "Freaky Tales," which posits the femme experience at the center of this narrative," La Doña told The FADER over email. "It appropriates the player/pimp trope we see so often in hip hop that usually works to objectify and denigrate female subjects, and inverts it with a radical feminist perspective."
Watch the video for "Le Lo Lai" above.
Thumbnail image: Thalia Gochez