A child of Dominican immigrants who was born in Italy, before immigrating to the U.S. herself, singer Yendry Fiorentino — better known as YEИDRY — has a lot to tap into for her debut album.
Como Agua, released Friday, features personal, serious pieces that detail her personal life by deconstructing genres like pop, reggaeton, R&B and more.
"Most of the songs, I cut my own vocals and I recorded it myself; that way I had more intimacy," Fiorentino said. "Cause some songs are very personal."
She was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and at 3 years old she moved to the Italian city of Turin to join her mother who had already migrated there. Music came into her life as she started liceo linguistico, a type of secondary school in Italy that focuses on foreign languages and a traditional humanities curriculum.
After watching performances of artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, Selena and Nina Simone on YouTube, she began singing and her friends started asking her to sing. Even her dad started asking her to sing in the car.
“ You start doing it because you like it, and then it gets to a point where you start realizing that people feel things when they hear your voice, or they even just like it,” Fiorentino said.
“And it got deeper and deeper, and I realized that I could actually find a way to sing to feel better, and so that's what I do now."
All the songs on Como Agua were written in different cities. She wrote Espejo in Amsterdam; Under the Radar in Mexico City; Mentira in Los Angeles. Each song holds a different story from her life, whether it's about her experiences from growing up in Italy or her reflections as a child of immigrants who then immigrated to the U.S. herself.
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Because all the songs sound very different from each other, Fiorentino wasn’t sure how to get all the songs in one cohesive album. She spoke to the album’s executive producer, Blue May, about this.
“ I remember he said something like, 'Your voice is the glue; it's your voice, your experiences, your life … You don't need all the songs to sound the same, but we will put some elements in there that would make them sound like they're part of the same world,'” she said.
Those elements include her voice, strings and percussion. These three elements can be heard distinctly in the song Mala mia. It's a suave, slow, hypnotizing bolero where the strings provide an orchestral element to the track. She sings:
Tanto le pedí a mis santos una persona como tú / Y ahora que te tengo aquí, entendí que esta vida no es para mí [I asked my saints so much for someone like you / And now that I have you here, I realized this life isn't for me]
The song is about a former relationship and Italy. Fiorentino no longer wanted to be in that relationship because she did not love him — and she felt like she had to leave Italy altogether.
“I feel like sometimes as a woman, you get caught in the, ‘Oh, now it's your turn to build a family … Oh, you have to stay here because you're already, 26’”, she said. “And I feel like I was at a point where people were asking me about those stuff, but I was just like, ‘Wait, I feel like I wanna move out of Italy 'cause there's nothing here for me.’"
Her experiences and reflections from growing up in Italy and visiting family in the Dominican Republic are some of the inspirations behind her intimate songs on Como Agua. The album is out now on all streaming platforms.
