La Doña's 'Can’t Eat Clout' Celebrates Her Upbringing And "A Moment Of Reckoning"
La Doña's latest release is a tale of perseverance — its story born from the hard-won successes and significant roadblocks familiar to many independent artists.
Can't Eat Clout — a four track, mutli-genre tale of resilience sung and rapped mostly in Spanish — follows a protagonist named Paloma who battles doubt, loss and expectations. While songs like "Paloma No Vuelve Amar" are, on the surface, about love, the EP's central message is the importance of standing in your truth.
Developed in the aftermath of a "really bad industry breakup," Can't Eat Clout is La Doña’s aural manifesto. The album is framed by a feminist lens, unabashedly pointing allegorical fingers without losing relation to the dancefloor.
"I was going in a different direction than a lot of people had expected me to do after my first EP," the San Francisco-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist tells GRAMMY.com. "Can't Eat Clout is a reflection on my issues with the music industry and how it can be really exploitative. It can be really obfuscating of artists' true interests and desires."
Born Cecilia Peña-Govea, La Doña's truest interests and desires are rooted in her community. The child of activists and musicians, La Doña began playing trumpet with her father's conjunto at age seven. Her love of music and understanding of the way it shapes identity was deepened by the Bay Area's myriad and intersecting sounds.
Following her 2020 EP Algo Nuevo, which was released just in time for California's COVID-19 lockdown, La Doña was determined to create the sound she loved to hear: something big, representative of her community, and truth-telling. Crucially, Can't Eat Clout was released on an independent record label and La Doña was highly involved in its production.
La Doña's statement of truth has certainly caught on. She recently performed at Outside Lands — one of San Francisco's biggest festivals, a highlight for the Bay Area native. Plus, President Obama included her 2022 single "Penas Con Pan" on his 2023 summer playlist.
That the former president would appreciate her dembow ode to magic mushrooms might be something of a surprise; that audiences would appreciate her aurally adventurous EP is not. In a short, seductively powerful package, Can't Eat Clout mixes salsa, corrido and hip-hop influences — La Doña even throws in a bit of doo-wop for good measure.
"This story that's autobiographical for me, it really does have different points. I felt that those would be best captured by having very sonically distinct moments," she notes.
La Doña acts as her own manager and musical director, in addition to being a teaching fellow. On what may be a rare break, she spoke with GRAMMY.com about the intersection of music and identity, and how Can't Eat Clout came to be.
I know that activism is important to you personally, and you explore it through your art. Can you explain the origins of that intersection?
I come from a big family of community organizers. My tía was one of the lead organizers on the UFW. All of the family was involved in the Farm Workers Movement, and later in the Central American Solidarity Movement up here in the Bay.
Music was always heavily intertwined with organizing work and any type of mobilization. In the Farm Workers Union, they would always start their meetings with "De Colores" and close with "De Colores" and have music. My father and the rest of his family was instrumental, no pun intended, in creating that soundtrack and having that musical presence.
He was always on the front line and always part of those demonstrations, and part of those calls to action presenting Chicano music or movement music. My mom's background was more in the folk revival movement, but caring a lot about roots music and the histories and union music too.
My sister and I were raised to hold that responsibility and that duty in knowing that music is fun for us and for our friends and family, but it's also a tool for connecting people and for bringing love and connectivity to places that are very heavy, and that can be extremely exhausting for participants and for organizers.
I've always known that to be my role. I feel like it does carry over into my project with La Doña.
Does Can't Eat Clout follow that thread in any way?
[The music industry] can be really manipulative – capitalism is shaping who people are supporting and how they're able to show up for artists, and just the pressures that we face to put out certain messaging or imagery.
The whole EP is kind of an exploration or a snapshot of the story of me just saying, F—that. I'm going to do what I want to do, and it's going to look this way. If you're with it, you're with it, and if you're not, then that's okay.
This EP was a community effort of childhood friends, family, and local musicians. Why was having that collaborative process and that big live band so important?
I think what I've just been clawing my way closer and closer to is how I started playing music, which is in a big band and in that live performance setting. We did live sessions to accompany three out of four of the tracks, and that was with a 13-piece band that I arranged and composed for, and directed and led.
I never would have been able to convince a major label to pay for a band like that. I never would've been able to lean on another musical director to put together a band of mostly femme, mostly queer, mostly BIPOC artists and musicians.
Hearing huge bands and growing up playing in my father's salsa bad, Los Compas, that's always just been the goal. That's always been what I think sounds best, what I think crowds respond to the most. To be able to put such a big group together, it's always been my intention.
The separation from the artist and all the different components of their artistry is really dangerous and really capitalistic, and I don't like it. I think that having a bigger collective experience on stage facilitates just a more cohesive connection to the audience and to the community.
How did this EP come together sonically? You have a few songs that are really cohesive, and then there's one that's in a very different tradition.
There are so many different cultural elements that are going into what we know as Chicanidad.
Somebody that didn't share any of my cultural background might listen to the EP and be like, She has hip-hop and now she has a flamenco intro and now she has a doo-wop, what is going on? But for those of us who grew up with all of these different musics, it feels just like any Sunday in the hood, you're going to hear all of these different types of music and they all capture different moments in the story that I'm telling.
I'm going to be releasing a libretto that is the narrative of the entire EP, the story of Paloma: how she is interacting with the music industry, how she's interacting with her lover and this heartbreak, how she's returning home, how she's interacting with a burning world in a rapidly gentrifying city.
This story is autobiographical for me; it really does have different points. I felt that those would be best captured by having very sonically distinct moments.
I'd love to know a bit more about your writing process. The songs on the EP have such beautiful metaphors, and that seems to be a throughline through your work.
My storytelling is really informed by corridos and from the music that I grew up listening to. The corrido is the style of music that's coming out of the borderlands, and out of northern Mexico, in the mid 1800s to late 1800s. It started as a way to tell war stories of the revolution, what was going on, what battle happened, where, who were the heroes.
I picked up a lot of metaphors and metaphorical language and symbolism from listening to rancheras and corridos, and then also just writers like Rubén Blades telling stories and using different musical inserts to set the stage and to be evocative of different countries and different personajes. Just using that sonic material as well as the rhythmic and instrumental material to build out just a huge story in a three-minute song.
To back it up a little bit, is there a song on this EP that you're most proud of?
The title track is a song that I wrote when I was in a really bad industry breakup. I had parted ways with management and with my distributor because I was going in a different direction than a lot of people had expected me to do after my first EP.
It was a moment of reckoning for me because I was like, People think what I'm doing isn't marketable, and so it's going to be difficult for me to find support and do I want to do this? The answer was definitely; I started this because I have a unique message and a unique sound, and because no one else was going to do it. I had this impetus to create what I wanted to create.
I think that "Can't Eat Clout," really epitomizes that whole journey for me because it started out over a pretty basic reggaeton beat that a friend had sent me and just vocals. I started adding horn lines and I started adding percussion, and then I started adding group coros, and then I started adding some rap. The only thing that's the same [from my original idea] is the lyrics, the melody and the story that I'm telling. The style now is like salsa dura, it has a montuno, it has a piano, it has a full percussion section. It's completely live.
Are most of the songs put together in a similar fashion where you would have an idea and then somebody else would bring something in and then you'd work like that, or was it a little bit more of a streamlined process?
Every single song is different. I wrote "Paloma" in the studio in one day with my producer Tano Brock. I had the melody and the story that I already wanted to tell.
There's songs like "Loser Girl," which I was like, I'm pissed about this and I'm going to write this diss track, and it just came out as a doo-wop. I was singing all of the parts.
Every song calls for different [elements]; they're all different recipes. You're never going to start with the same elements or even at the same process as other recipes.
Do you have any thoughts on regional Mexican music becoming something a bit bigger and broader, and available to an audience that isn't Latino?
Mexican music has always been super popular. Latinos are one of the biggest demographics in the United States. I think it's mostly about capitalism where people are able to identify that market, whereas before there was a lot of fear around it. It has been selling and it has been supporting entire generations of people who are living outside of their homes or who are living across the border.
I think that regional Mexican music has always been popping. It has always been really widely consumed as I used to work at Pandora Radio as a Latin music analyst, and that was one of the highest spinning radio stations. It doesn't come as a surprise to me, but it is really beautiful to see that more people are having the opportunity to express themselves in that genre.
I'm a teacher, so one of my biggest sources of pride is seeing how these young kids are growing up. They're using gender inclusive languages, they're able to talk about their sexual identities and being bi or being pan, being trans. To see them so brave and so just aware of all of these intricacies of life and of identity, I think it's just where we're going as a people, I feel really proud and excited to follow their example.
How does feminism and queer identity play a part within your own music?
It's all about taking up that space and saying like, no, I am doing corridos, I am doing banda, I am doing salsa — I hold those practices very dear, and I studied the roots of them, and I am deeply interested in how they have existed — but it's time for a changeover; to be telling stories that are more inclusive and appropriate for queer, brown, femme audiences. Because, at the end of the day, we're the culture keepers and culture creators.
I think that it's about time that we have art that isn't violent towards us, and that is exciting and inspiring for us to tell our stories in ways that are non co-optive.
As a lover of hip-hop and hyphy music, just so much of music is inherently violent towards women and gay people and queer people, and all of us who are falling outside of this very stiff hetero identity. It's super alienating. We need to push further.
Since you brought up hyphy, how has the Bay influenced your sound?
I feel blessed to be from the Bay Area because it's just a node of so many different cultural practices. It's the foundation of my interests and of my writing and of my theoretical practice.
I would say that the Bay Area is very diverse and it also kind of breaks away from this monolithic Chicano culture where it's only lowrider oldies or only salsa. In the Bay Area there's such a diversity of Latinos and of all types of people. Growing up with that and studying those musics before I even really understood what my ethnic background was, it lends to my desire and my ability to continue to connect across genres, and to bring all types of people and influences into my music.
I would say that two really big loves of my life are hip-hop music and reggaeton, and those are both music that don't come from Mexico, they don't come from California. They're just musics that I found from being in public school with my compañeros, with the rest of the homies, and I think that that kind of access was life-altering.
This has been a huge summer for you in a multitude of ways. What was it like to play Outside Lands?
It was honestly one of the best days of my life, and I'm not like that.
I'm my manager, I'm my tour manager, I am my music director. I do everything for the project, so I never really have time to be like, This is fun. Oh my God, cute. I'm busy, busy, busy, but Outside Lands was just such a spectacular experience. To have all of my family, all of my homegirls there who worked on the visuals, my outfits…pretty much everybody that I love had a piece in making the show what it was.
Usually I play with a track, [so] to present the new music, have a 10 piece band on stage on the main stage, it was just a dream come true.
What's next for you?
One of the highlights of my year is going to be headlining at the Fillmore. I never even would've imagined that that would be in the cards for me. It's a really trippy and beautiful and exciting moment for me playing with Son Rompe Pera. We're existing in completely different worlds, but I feel like we have such similar influences and all of their songs, I'm like, I know this music and I feel like they feel the same way about my music.
I'm a fellow for the California Arts Commission, so I will be working full-time with students writing, composing, arranging, and recording new music with my kids. May and June we'll be releasing music together and having a couple shows.
It feels really special to be at this point in my life where all of my interests and all of my skills are…[being put] to use for the first time in singular projects. I've always had a million jobs, but now being able to tie everything together and offer all of my gifts back to the kids, back to the community, that's what I was raised to do.