Daily Dose is your daily source for the song you absolutely, positively need to hear every day. Curated by the Paste Music Team.
Xenia Rubinos’ last genre-bending, identity-interrogating album, Black Terry Cat (2016), took its cues from hip-hop, jazz, R&B and soul to create something entirely new. The Brooklyn-based Afro-Latina artist hasn’t stopped innovating since, releasing a Mick Jones-approved Spanish-language cover of The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” performing as alter ego XENIA2020 in a string of videos for the Chilean YouTube channel La Vitrola (including a cover of ROSALÍA’s “A ningún hombre”), featuring on the new album from Battles, Juice B Crypts, and appearing on an episode of Ben Arthur’s Paste-partnered SongWriter podcast just this year alone. Today (Nov. 19), Rubinos has dropped a new single and video, “DIOSA,” that takes her sound in yet another new direction.
“DIOSA” is an infectious ode to confidence, combining claps, thumping beats and bouncy synths. Rubinos is refreshing as ever as she boldly melds languages—English and Spanish—and genres—hip-hop, rap, dance. She models pure self-love in the track’s video, dancing and jumping around in an array of shiny, colorful outfits with some seriously stylish kicks. She calls the new single “more electronic and aggressive than [her] previous work,” and an “anthem of female ferocity and power.” Just as she intended, “DIOSA” feels like a pep talk from a beloved friend, and it’ll get you feeling yourself in no time:
“DIOSA” is a track I’d had in mind for a long time … The hook is what I envisioned myself chanting to a friend or a woman I admired to encourage her to keep going and to feel in her power. Diosa (goddess), Reina (queen), Chula (hottie), Bella (beautiful)—I envisioned women getting ready, looking themselves in the mirror, dancing solo in their rooms—it’s an anthem to hype yourself up and start something.
Check out “DIOSA” below (along with the artist’s 2014 Daytrotter session) and listen to the other half of Rubinos’ double single, the warrior-themed “BUGEISHA,” here.