Lido Pimienta Dreams of a World Where We All Laugh at Billionaires

Lido Pimienta is not here to make your algorithm comfortable. While lots of artists are busy building a personal brand, optimizing their morning routine, and pretending capitalism is just a cute little inconvenience, Lido is busy imagining a better world, one with neighbors who actually know each other and where billionaires are getting roasted at dinner parties. Her new album Caribenya is a celebration of abundance, resistance, and happiness that will not let itself be dimmed by the state of the world. We spoke about Caribbean joy as a political act, rejecting the “perfect” body, making classical music out of spite (and of course, raw talent).

Caribenya is a record about joy without pretending everything is okay. Do you think happiness can be a political choice?
It is an extremely Caribbean thing to be happy despite hardship; our revolution looks like joy, and it is the pursuit of joy, and the emphasis on being joyful in spite of capitalism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy that we sing and dance!

You described the album as beaches, dancing, family, celebration, all these things that can seem almost opposite when everything feels so bleak. However, you steer away from escapism too. Tell me why!
Darling because you never show your haters that you are not doing well. Resistance is beautiful, and so are we, the oppressed; we push through the struggles, and we are aware that the evil systems in power thrive on our depression and our health going wrong. I am deeply rooted in reality; I cannot look away at pain and injustice, but I resist with my culture. 

You describe this era as one of “diasporic abundant beauty.” What does abundance look like to you?
Abundance is knowing your neighbor’s names, knowing where your food comes from, and music playing beyond 10 pm and no one being silly and miserable enough to call the police on you for enjoying yourself. I never knew oppression like that until I moved to Canada, my God….The silence is deadly…

Speaking about the new album, you said, “Someone told me that making a classical album was going to be impossible for me, and I did it—an ‘impossible, only-Europeans-could-ever-do-this’ album.” Did hearing that light a fire in you to prove them wrong? Or was making the album more about challenging those assumptions and proving something to yourself?
I respect classical music so much, I enjoy being in the symphony and orchestral space so much, the discipline and the love for music one must have to be in line and join a huge band of brilliant people is amazing, the thing I reject is the notion that European music is superior than popular or folk music, so it felt natural to pursue an album that only used classical instrumentation and my voice, it turned out I am very good at it, and now everything I make, electronically, it must have some kind of arrangement beyond what is presented to me by the plug-in of the day. Music is music is music! 

It’s refreshing how uninterested you seem in performing yourself online or becoming some brand. What’s something about your life that you’ve deliberately kept offline?
I used to share my life online because only my close friends were watching. I didn’t understand the power of social media, and then one day I started getting targeted by white supremacists, bigots, and very scary people online, so my relationship to online communication changed drastically, and I became very afraid of showing myself, my family, or my thoughts online. I am more mature now; I am more in control, and I also reject the notion of becoming a puppet of the consumerist machine. I want people to associate me with my art; anything beyond that is not for people to know. I do not need that kind of validation, and I also want to curate myself and my content in a way that is organized and iconic. It is hard because when I started with social media I was so green and naíve, but it’s all part of growing up. I am still aware that the more I expose myself and show myself in my ‘natural state’ will bring more views and likes and sell me more tickets, so at this moment I am figuring out how to show my personality more, but without falling into the tiredness of the circus that social media has become. 

You’ve spoken about feeling like a foreigner in Colombia, and then arriving in Ontario and feeling foreign all over again. Has distance changed the way you think about Colombia? Are there traditions you’ve found yourself holding onto more fiercely with time?
I am able to travel to Colombia more often. I have created new friend groups of like-minded, brilliant artists, and that is what I was missing in the past when visiting Colombia. Today I enjoy the fruits of my labour. I have a backyard full of fruit trees, and I am saving my seeds, and I am learning how to conserve food, so I am locked in with my territory and a brand new community of kind and intelligent people. Before, I was not fully connected with the people I was meant to surround myself with. 

La Belleza was written for an orchestra. Caribenya came together on a laptop in your kitchen. One sounds monumental, the other domestic. Which process felt closer to you?
La Belleza was also made on a laptop; what changed was that my co-producer and arranger, Owen Pallett, transcribed the music, and we flew to Colombia and recorded the music in two days, but it took me like 2 years to write at home while I was raising a toddler during COVID and moving to a new city and almost divorcing…That is why La Belleza sounds so intense! Caribenya on the other hand was a gift of collaboration, with my longtime friends, I made it all int he laptop after kids went to school and then I would meet with my producers on tour, visiting New York or Buenos Aires, Colombia and Los Angeles, and finally some of us met back in Canada, it just happened in a more relaxed way because my personal life didn’t feel like was going to end. 

You describe making the album as an act of healing through collaboration. “It has a sense of joy and collaboration that is very Caribbean. It’s like ‘come over and hang. You don’t need to set up an appointment, you can just knock on the door.’” What’s important about the spontaneity of friendships?
My friends are my chosen family, and to be in my friend group means you are a fantastic, loyal person. I have very little patience for fake folks, and as a September Virgo, I am quick to disappear from people’s lives after they betray me or hurt me intentionally. So this record, Caribenya, was beautiful because it felt like a huge reward, like a huge gift, it felt like opening presents every time I opened my inbox with a new beat or a new arrangement from the group, so many of the songs have had so many versions, if anyone were to hack my WhatsApp the would laugh at how ridiculous the early versions of the songs sounded, but that’s the thing about being in a safe place with people one can be oneself with, the process can be messy and no one will judge you. 

What was it like to collaborate with Nelly Furtado? What made her feel like the perfect collaborator?
The song HOY POR TI had many versions, and one of the early versions just happened to be one of Nelly’s favourites in the demo stage of the record. Nelly, apart from being a dear friend, is a master musician and brilliant producer, so she heard the album when I was working on it, and she always encouraged me to continue working on Hoy Por Ti. Until we arrived at the latest iteration, she came to the studio to say ‘hi,’ and I asked her to get in the booth. She did the song in like 10 minutes; she is brilliant. 

You wrote that wanting a world full of love and justice “isn’t sexy and doesn’t sell.” What would it look like for you?
The perfect world to me would be a world where no one buys anything from any corporation, and no one goes to work. Only when people stop buying crap will the elite shake in their boots. Only when mothers and fathers and caregivers can live in a system where they are the sole carers of their children will we have happiness and freedom. I dream of a world where people laugh at billionaires; it is so gross to be a billionaire and not build a single hospital or school, to accumulate all of that wealth to hoard all of that money, and to not influence politics to do their job is a shame. So yes, the world would be very sexy if we didn’t eat any processed foods, if we didn’t have to communicate via devices made with child labour….

One of your friends said you wouldn’t make it because “all you talk about is politics and you are fat”. ??? With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Fuck that bitch, ‘Tóxica, Toxica….’ You know it’s very important that as women we understand that the reason the media needs you to stay thin and weak is so that you cannot rise up, and the reason why they don’t want women to look like women is that the people who own the power are PDFs. If more women knew this, we would have fewer eating disorders – fatphobia is so pathetic; people obsessed with other people’s weight are pathetic, and I am so proud of my journey in my body. I am grateful to my body; it has carried my three children, and it carries me now. That ‘friend’ was just insecure about their own lack of talent compared to me, but at the time I thought they really cared about my health. My health problems came after they filled me with insecurities; the pain came later with the anxiety they sparked in me after being such a wholesome, happy person. They turned me into a stress ball, and the pain was deep. Today I am in a better space. I am more beautiful than ever and very healthy because I gave myself the power to close the door in the face of that cruel person. I hope whoever is struggling with their cortisol and water retention and is not naturally skinny, who is reading this, knows their journey is for them only; whoever makes them feel bad for existing in this world as they naturally come should not be allowed in their precious aura. 

I love the cover because it’s so regal; you take up so much physical space.  At the same time, your caption (you can sit at our table) sounds like the host of a radically good dinner party. Tell me about your ideas behind it!
The cover came after months of research with my creative director and fellow Colombian, Stephania Yepes. She and I always create from Nostalgia, memory, and Fantasy. We are both obsessed with family albums from the 80s and 90s, and we get lots of aesthetic inspiration and ideas for looks and moments from printed photographs that have been damaged by the sun. Analog photography was accessible, and people captured real moments, so this cover had that intention behind it, to capture Caribbean abundance, beauty, and community in one simple image, and me embodying those things under a mango tree, the symbolism goes deep. I will do a special series or something about it, but yes, it is my best cover so far. I love my creative team, and we have set the bar really high for ourselves.