Residente’s ‘Las Letras Ya No Importan’: A Troublemaker Reveals His Heart

Residente — the Puerto Rican songwriter René Pérez Joglar — is lying, or at least misdirecting, with the title of his second solo album, “Las Letras Ya No Importan” (“The Lyrics Don’t Matter Anymore”). Words still matter to Residente, and they pour out of him. As always, he’s a blunt, far-reaching, fast-talking rapper who’s determined to engage on multiple fronts: political, cultural, mythmaking, cybernetic, sardonic and — now more than ever — personal.

Residente arrived in the early 2000s as the frontman of Calle 13, his duo with his half brother Eduardo Cabra (a.k.a. Visitante). With Residente rapping and Visitante overseeing the musical backdrops, Calle 13 conquered the Americas with rebellious, hard-hitting and sonically omnivorous songs. Residente’s virtuosic raps in Spanish flaunted impeccable diction and a compulsion to push boundaries. He was often crudely raunchy, science-minded and ideologically sophisticated in the same song. As Calle 13’s popularity and ambitions grew, the group formed international musical and activist alliances with songs like the Pan-American manifesto “Latinoamérica” in 2011. The duo went separate ways in 2015.

For his first solo album, “Residente” in 2017, Pérez took a DNA test and followed the results to his ancestral homelands, drawing on local musical traditions and, in some places, visiting conflict zones. The new album isn’t so tidily conceptual.

With 20 songs that Residente has amassed over the last seven years, “Las Letras Ya No Importan” is a huge harvest of assorted ideas, from minimalistic to lavish, from cocky to righteous to humble to unexpectedly romantic.

The album is packed with collaborators including the rappers Busta Rhymes, Big Daddy Kane and Vico C (a Puerto Rican reggaeton pioneer) and the singers Rauw Alejandro and Christian Nodal, among many others. It dips into rock, old-school hip-hop, flamenco, Cuban son, Palestinian music, electro and — with tongue in cheek — pop. (“Quiero Ser Baladista” — “I Want to Be a Ballad Singer” — suddenly switches from a belligerent rap over electric-guitar chords to an ardent love-song chorus from none other than Ricky Martin.)

The set reclaims Residente singles like the fiercely percussive “This Is Not America” from 2022, which insists “America isn’t only the U.S.A.,” and “Problema Cabrón,” a blues-rock rap that revels in being a troublemaker. The album concludes with Residente’s 2020 single “René,” a gut-spilling seven-minute confessional that sets his fears and self-doubts to somber, sustained chamber-music strings — until Rubén Blades shows up for a conga-driven coda.