Maluma Takes Aim at ‘Douchebags’ in New Single, ‘HP’
Maluma released “HP,” the latest in a long line of hooky pop-reggaeton singles, on Friday. It will appear on his upcoming album, titled 11:11.
“HP” started “three months ago in a hotel room in Bolivia,” Maluma tells Rolling Stone. “I have friends in Colombia where I’m from, and these girls were saying they were tired of douchebags, tired of these guys that don’t respect them and give them the place that they deserve,” the singer explains. “That stayed in my mind.”
So while there are plenty of male-driven, you-done-me-wrong hits in the Latin mainstream right now — think of “Te Boté” — Maluma sings “HP” from the opposite perspective. The hook roughly translates as, “She wants to go out, smoke, drink/Post a video so he can see it/So he can realize what he lost/So the son of a bitch can feel worse.”
“HP” follows his standalone single, “Mala Mia,” which became Maluma’s 11th Number One hit on Latin radio in the U.S. “I was in the studio, I finished the song,” Maluma recalls. “I called the label and my management, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be part of an EP, an album, whatever, but I need people to listen to this.'” It was his second single in 2018 to lead three different radio charts at once.
Despite all Maluma’s commercial success in the U.S. — in addition to his radio hits, he completed an arena tour of the country last year — there are still ceilings he hopes to break outside of Latin America. “My next step is going to Asia,” the singer explains. “It’s a big market; it’s a difficult market.”
“But,” he adds, “I think that nothing is impossible.”