Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical Fuse Sounds for Collaborative Album ‘Helado Tropical’

By Maya Georgi

Maya Georgi

It’s about to be a dreamy, nostalgic summer. Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical have announced their new collaborative album Helado Tropical, out July 17 via Pyschic Hotline.

The collaborative album comes after the artists, whose real names are Roberto Carlos Lange and Fabi Reyna respectively, went into the studio intending to write one song together. But that soon turned into “a three-day sleepover,” per a press release, where the pair made a bulk of the nine songs from Helado Tropical.

“There was never a moment where we felt super stuck,” Lange said in a statement. “It was just like ‘ok what’s next?’ and even within the songs, trying to create these micro worlds — we just felt excited about each moment.”

One of those micro worlds comes alive on the chilled-out lead single “Tocando,” released today in tandem with the LP announcement. “En el momento que pasaste / Y el amor no me pego como antes,” Reyna trills over Lange’s fluid beat. According to a press release, “Tocando” came together “after more than a day without sleep” where Reyna kept at the lyrics until they finally wrote them with an “essay-like outpouring.”

Lange and Reyna also shared a visual to accompany the song. Directed by Josh Finck, it’s a trippy, vintage-hued music video that finds the two Latin musicians singing about their feelings as they walk through a bright grocery store. While Lange and Reyna made the album together, Helado Tropical’s songs don’t find the two artists in conversation with each other. “It’s not about us speaking to each other,” Lange said in a statement. “It’s about us existing in the same feeling.”

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