David MartÃnez Ãlvarez, better known as Rayden, seems different when he appears dressed in black with a sweater that hides his tattoos and starts talking about how he is doing with the signings of his new book. Cultivating an elegance that contrasts with the image that rappers usually have, he arrives in Barcelona to present his new album, La victoria imposible, seventh and last in two decades of career. A record that the musician from Alcalá de Henares relates to that victory that the racing driver Tazio Nuvolari achieved against the odds at the Nurburgring circuit in 1935, reflecting a career that the rapper has decided to abandon to dedicate himself to literature, a vocation that has come his way. of the forty After the experience of signing books in Barcelona for Sant Jordi and with his last tour already underway, he attends La Vanguardia with the peace of mind of thinking that this maelstrom is “the beginning of the end”, reflecting on the success from the side of the barrier of who has achieved it.
His latest album is an impossible victory
The impossible Victory is singing victory, reaching the goal. It is the seventh album and it came from two trilogies, the first based on the message, and the second around the word that was Antonym, Synonym and Homonym, and this album is the redefinition of these ideas. What I have found in my echo chamber, with my people, is that after the pandemic, the abstract words that had value for us are now soulless, they were packaging that did not measure up to what they wanted to say to us. Failure is no longer what it used to be, vulnerability wasn’t so bad, failing is fine letting go is a huge relief. We go with a backpack filling new concepts and this album enters into a debate with the two trilogies and comes out victorious. I like that it was like that, perhaps that’s why I understood it as the last album, and for people as the best saying of the career, because everything makes sense and because in the end it is a conceptual work to the end.
To say that the word has lost its meaning is not like saying that its past is devoid of meaning?
It has lost its inherited meaning. Before we didn’t even complain, love is this, hate is that, failure is that. Since I can remember if you cried it was like a girl, if you are innocent, they are going to take advantage of you, all these things. They say I’m an image of the new masculinity, but if that means being a vulnerable child again, then call it what you want, but it has to do with reconnecting. It is not that the word has lost its meaning, but how nice that we are in a reality where you can doubt the meaning that things have, and you can redefine your own empathy.
Isn’t this impossible victory an acknowledgment of an unattainable goal?
On the contrary, the song is a synonym of victory, for me singing victory is a pleonasm, because whenever there is a song involved, everyone wins. But in music nobody knows how to win, the one who has nothing wants something, he wants to be emerging, to climb positions on the poster. The one who is already beginning to be in the middle table wants to become big, and the one who is big wants to stay. Nobody knows how to win, nobody knows how to say “well, this is what I wanted to tell, I don’t have to support myselfâ€. I don’t know how to win either, but I think the road begins with this kind of honesty, sincerity, knowing that I’ve already told everything I had to tell, the best thing I’ve done is this album and since I’m not going to get over it, Why do I have to do things to support myself?
And decides to start writing
I have felt a vocation for the first time in the world of writing, and what better than leaving the space that I can occupy in a festival or on a list to a person who really has a lot to prove. Everything that I had to teach I have already done, and I am within my right to hand over the knives, if there are no more wars to lose or win. I’m not a music official, and I don’t owe it to my audience. I feel very grateful but I don’t have to meet your quota.
Wouldn’t it have been better to announce the withdrawal at the end of the tour, in 2024?
No, I would have had a terrible time being quiet and disrespecting the public, not keeping that energy for so long, now I feel free. There are works that have value because they have their beginning and their end, and The Impossible Victory makes sense if you listen to it knowing that it is the last one and still there is no solemnity, the pomposity of the farewell. I liked to be honest with the public so that the ball was in their court and they did not suffer.
The themes of The Impossible Victory are an acknowledgment that you can fail
You have to surrender, not give up but surrender, in this case stop music. It is the first time that I have felt calm, and when you think of something and feel calm, you have to continue.
Is it the result of many years of pressure?
Yes, and it’s funny because I’ve never had impostor syndrome and the other day in Sant Jordi, next to the cream of writing, I felt like a fake, it was a matter of time before they caught me. And I liked feeling it for the first time at 37 years old.
What authors do you have as a reference?
If someone freaks me out, it’s Ray Loriga, Manuel Jabois, I love Rosa Montero, Antonio Agredano, their energies seem the best to me, or BenjamÃn Prado when it comes to spinning, being a sniper. They are authors who perhaps have conditioned my way of writing with those truths to cannon shots between points. I got out my book [Cactus Woman and Balloon Man Approach] before Ray Loriga’s latest [Any Summer Is An End]. They are two totally different stories, but both make an apology for the during, for the waiting rooms, for what a funeral home waiting room is like, or a burial, or a suicide, or waiting for the son who has to kill the absent father.
The cover of The Impossible Victory is dedicated to the racing driver Tazio Nuvolari
The title does not refer so much to Tazio’s story as to that impossible victory, that race. In Nazi Germany, in 1935, it was not a wedding banquet, and he managed to win with a car that was not at the forefront. It was so impossible for him to win that they hadn’t prepared his song, but he always went with his song on his back, and they put a laurel wreath on him that was too big for him, and I liked that. You only have to get into the Top 50 of the most listened to to know that there is a new world regime, but my proposal has to do with something else older. I’m the rapper who, because he likes the Beatles, thinks he’s special. On the road that I have done there is no grill, no opponent, the rivals were myself, and I don’t care if the laurel wreath is too big for me because for me victory has always been overrated. This story seemed to me that it was closely related to what my musical career has been, which has been 22 years and that race was 22 laps.
To what extent has being a father made you come to this end all over again?
If I had not been a father, I would have lived everything in a more relaxed way, I would not have had both music and a job to give my son facilities. One of the conditions for leaving it is the tour last year in Latin America, where I was away for 20 days, something that I did not want to repeat, I did not want to be away for so many days again, with a bad connection, with the time change, and see a pixelated stain and believe that he is my son, see me as an absent father. I am a person who is very close to my son’s life, I think that between the two of us we have a space to communicate.
And what does your son think of his withdrawal?
It felt terrible, as a recess alarm they sometimes put Calle de la llorerÃa, and now his father leaves the music. I understand from what he says because he sees me as a superdad and it seems that I am going to stop making people happy, for him I am a social good.
Do you listen to the new generations of musicians?
As with books, I like authors, what I like are artists, I’m not into genres. What happens is that now everything is going so fast, that after only four days of promotion, someone already appears and they exalt him as the most. The young public goes at a rate that as soon as someone is elevated, they have already been burned. I love Bad Bunny, Eladio Carrión, Duki and Trueno, and I love most of those who make music in Argentina.
From now on he wants to earn a living with literature
And composing and producing for other artists, I’m not going to leave that. But from my voice and megaphone I’m done.
Did you feel compelled to sing?
Yes, and it’s hard to realize because on stage you feel very comfortable, you’re getting more and more crowded, the record company treats you better and you notice that you’re growing. And especially when you are on tour with your friends, although the public sees it as a band but they are my friends. But when I made the decision I realized that it was the first time that I have owned my how. I started rapping when I was little because one summer night, because I didn’t go to fairs, one of the group said why don’t we make a group. I have lyrics, he said, I am a DJ, answered another. And I wrote poetry more badly than well, and that kept me trying to do it as well as possible. But now that I have felt a vocation for the first time, for writing, I have realized that I love music, I love music, but I had never had an organic vocation for music.
But yes some contractual obligations
When there is a contract you have to make a series of records, and above all you have a band to maintain. In a pandemic I felt like the father who did not bring bread to the house of my musicians and my technical team, because I could tour acoustically, but they could not.
What is the difference between writing a book and composing a song?
When you write a song you have a moment of lucidity and you create a chorus that sells you tickets, that fills the halls. You must have this moment of lucidity on each page when writing a novel. You start to make a hole with buttresses so you don’t drop the chiringuito, and in that mining tunnel when you come out you have to still have the canary alive, and I love that challenge. You can make a song without resolving a conflict, but if you show a gun in a novel it has to be shot. I find all the layers much more exciting, especially now in times of streaming where music is listened to passively, by hearsay. But if someone gets hold of your book, it’s because they want to get into your trap.
The way of listening to music has transformed the songs
In music, in the first seconds you have to go for the kill, and the bridge no longer exists, it starts with the chorus and has to end with the chorus. The structure is a chorus, a small verse, chorus and that’s it, and a minute and 20. For me, one of my defects is that I put a lot of text in the songs, I don’t fit what I want to say in a minute 20. But These are times when you also have to learn, they are stimulating.
