Late last spring, Lorén Aldarondo was halfway through her shift waiting tables when her phone buzzed. It was her music manager, which puzzled her because he typically didn’t call when she was on the clock. Curious, she answered, and was told she needed to get on a conference call immediately. He insisted it was urgent.
Lorén is the lead singer of Puerto Rican indie quartet Chuwi, alongside her two brothers Wilfredo and Wester and their close friend Adrián López. Chuwi’s sound is near-impossible to pin down, by design. They’re tropical fusion, but also Latin jazz, but also indie rock, but also rap, but also just… vibes. Despite how messy that might look on paper, they pull it all off in a way that’s undeniably appealing.
Since the release of their 2022 EP Pan, they’d been slowly building a fanbase on the archipelago, and in early 2024 they gained even more recognition with their second EP, Tierra. That project’s title track had taken off, earning them a spot on a few notable local stages and admiration from fellow artists. But the attention was still nowhere close enough for them to quit their day jobs.
Lorén excused herself and hopped on the call, and found her brothers were also tuned in. Their manager didn’t waste time to break the news: Bad Bunny had heard them, liked them, and wanted them to share any songs they were working on because he was interested in a collaboration.
Thus began a whirlwind few months of delirium, fits ‘n’ starts, elation, resignation, and more that culminated this January when Bad Bunny released his fifth studio album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, which includes Chuwi prominently on the track “Weltita.”
On the day of their Rolling Stone interview, they had just performed alongside Bad Bunny the previous night at a surprise mini-concert the superstar threw for fans in San Juan’s Río Piedras neighborhood. It was the first time they’d played with him in front of the public, and the emotions were still high less than 24 hours later. They’d rehearsed together with him before, but never in front of a crowd. The feeling was, to put it mildly, surreal. “We’ve interacted with Benito before, but [last night] we interacted with Bad Bunny,” Wilfredo says.
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During the early weeks of DTMF press, Chuwi had shared a few small details of how “Weltita” came together, but they decided to spill it all here. “This is the real tea, for Rolling Stone,” Lorén says. “We haven’t told the full story anywhere else.”
After that early-2024 phone call, they huddled together to figure out what tracks to send. They didn’t want to send what they considered to be the best tracks from their upcoming album, so they cobbled together some other songs and shared them with Bad Bunny’s team. “We didn’t hear anything for months. Radio silence,” Lorén says.
Later that summer, they finally heard back. Benito liked one of the songs, but insisted he wanted to hear more. “We were gatekeeping our album,” Lorén says, laughing. “And he detected that.” Now under pressure, they relented. “We had one that we didn’t wanna show him, because we knew he was gonna really like it,” Wester says. “But we folded, and we showed it to him because we wanted to know what he thought. And sure enough, he loved it.”
Benito’s team disappeared again for another handful of months, and Chuwi figured that the window of opportunity had passed. “We were like, how cool that he reached out, but this is it. It’s nice to be considered, and we love that,” says Lorén.
A few weeks later, in mid-November, the fateful message arrived: Bad Bunny will be in town for a week. Get ready to hop in the studio with him.
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As it happened, he had decided to write an original song for their collaboration. That song was “Weltita,” and Chuwi was flattered and enamored with the track when they heard it. But they had one request.
“It’s a good song, another Bad Bunny hit, and we tell him, ‘By chance, do you think we can put some of our production on it as well?’” Wester says. “And he’s like ‘Welllllll, I like how it sounds now, but… y’know what, sure.’”
They spent three days working on the track on their own. “We sent it back, scared they were gonna hate it, and once again didn’t hear anything for a few days,” Wester continues. “And then suddenly, out of the blue: ‘Hey, you guys gotta go to the studio to finish the song.’ We’re like ‘Oh fuck, he liked it! We’re in!’”
The boost that comes from appearing as a guest artist on a chart-topping album from one of the biggest artists in the world cannot be understated. Chuwi’s monthly listeners on Spotify went from low five figures to 14 million almost overnight, and they’ve quintupled their Instagram follower count. “We got an interview request from Poland the other day!” Wester says.
Before all this, they say, they had a five-year plan for their career. They figured that in the best-case scenario, by 2025 they could hopefully book a few small shows in New York. “It feels like we zoomed forward three years,” says Lorén. “Now what are we gonna do?” Wilfredo has an even more apt comparison that a mutual friend offered up: They were originally on a tricycle, “but now it has a rocket strapped to it and you gotta learn to ride it.”
In interviews promoting DTMF, Bad Bunny has talked about how the months he spent living in Los Angeles while producing and touring his previous album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, made him homesick. He’s said that listening to music from Puerto Rico inspired him during that time, and name-dropped Chuwi as one of the groups he discovered. When asked how it feels to know they’re a small part of the reason DTMF came to be, the band is understandably at a loss for words. “I feel like I don’t know that,” says Adrián. “I can’t internalize that. That can’t be true. I’m convincing myself he never said that.”
“Hearing that doesn’t really help with my problem of believing everything is a simulation,” Wilfredo adds, laughing. “Maybe people can’t tell, but there’s some Bad Bunny in Chuwi. When I sing, I know some of my [cadence] comes from him.”
For Lorén, though, it points to a larger sentiment. “Before, we received really nice messages from people in the diaspora who would tell us, ‘We listen to your music and it makes us feel closer to home,’” she says. “To hear him say the same, you don’t even have to go that deep: He spent eight months in Los Angeles, away from his culture, and as a person he wanted to feel the warmth [of Puerto Rico]. To me it speaks towards the humanity of that sensation. I feel really glad that people identify with it, and that it becomes part of their process, and that out of that process we get something like this album.”
As the year progresses, fans old and new should be excited about the future of Chuwi. They’re currently putting the finishing touches on their debut album, tentatively due this summer. As for what to expect from that project, perhaps Benito himself can shed some light: “We showed some of the album’s songs to Badbo and he asked us if we did shrooms,” Lorén says with a laugh.
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“I think that summarizes it,” Wester adds. “We’re happy with how it’s coming together. It’s the first time we’ve done a sound that’s so dynamic. We put a lot into the instrumentalization and musicality.”
The group knows it’s going to be a big swing and might be jarring for fans who potentially expect more of the same, but they’re not sweating it. “We’re very passionate about it. Like, if everyone hates it and thinks it’s trash, we’re still going to be so happy with it,” says Lorén. “We’re going to be very satisfied.”
