Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Mexican pop star Humbe has released three albums in three years. His latest, Dueño del Cielo, is the last in a trilogy which explores love, loss, and hope. A recent nominee for Best New Artist at the Latin Grammys, Humbe is best known for thoughtful songwriting and production that combines R&B with traditional Mexican instrumentation. His new album Dueño del Cielo is out now. He is performing two nights at Brooklyn Paramount tomorrow night and Friday night. We are lucky enough to get a sneak preview of those shows. Humbe joins me here in studio for a live performance. It is very nice to meet you.

Humbe: Nice to meet you too. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing well. Will you introduce us to everybody real quick before we start?

Humbe: Yes. It's my photographer. This Roberto, my drummer.

Alison Stewart: Nice to meet you.

Roberto: Hello.

Humbe: My musical director, Marcos. This is my dearest friend, a guitar player. We're very happy to be here. We're very, very happy to meet you. Thank you for having us here.

Alison Stewart: We're going to start off with the song novatos from your 2024 album. Will you set this up for us?

Humbe: Of course. This is a song that I wrote about I feel like the purest form of love. A song I wrote about the relationship I see in my brother and his future wife, I believe. I love this song, and it's about being new to love, basically.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear it.

Humbe: Thank you.

[MUSIC - Humbe:novatos]

Alison Stewart: That was singer-songwriter Humbe with a live performance of his song novatos from his album Dueño del Cielo. It's out now. He's performing at Brooklyn Paramount tomorrow night and Friday night. You put out three albums in three years. Was it always meant to be that way?

Humbe: No. Actually, no. It's just life. I feel like I never put that much pressure in myself on releasing music. I just do it whenever it feels right. It's kind of a good coincidence it landed on three separate years.

Alison Stewart: Did the final album, did it wind up being sort of a finishing point for the whole project?

Humbe: I do feel like it, or I did feel like it at some point, but now I'm living more, and I feel like there's not an end in this until I die, basically. I don't know.

Alison Stewart: That's so funny. It could become a four albums quattro single. It could keep going.

Humbe: No. Volumes.

Alison Stewart: Volumes, volumes. I understand you went to Iceland to make this record.

Humbe: I did.

Alison Stewart: First of all, why Iceland.

Humbe: Well, we were looking for this Bon Iver aesthetic on the album. We didn't find it. We found something else, which is the most beautiful part of it because we combined all of our colors into one to create this album. When I say we, I'm talking about me, my brother Navi, which is a productor, and my sister-in-law, Christa, which is also my photographer. It was beautiful. It was honestly a beautiful experience. It came out beautifully.

Alison Stewart: What do you think about being in Iceland? What did it offer you creatively?

Humbe: Well, the site was beautiful. Every day it was beautiful. Yes. We went during summer.

Alison Stewart: Oh.

Humbe: Yes. There was no sundown. There was no night. It was pure daylight. There were some two or three hours that was the blue hour, but it was the most dark it got. Besides that, it was magical. Experiencing even sunsets in there. They lasted for three, four hours. It was weird, but it's something the world does, I guess.

Alison Stewart: I went to Alaska in the middle of July, in the middle of summer, and it's weird to be out at 11:30 on a playground, on a swing. You should be in bed, but you aren't. You're outside playing. Something in you gets stirred up.

Humbe: Yes. It also effects in the creative flow, I believe, because I am a night person, I work at night. Not having that, just having to make myself work during the whole day, made myself just have pure continuous creative hours of workflow. It was beautiful.

Alison Stewart: Well, maybe that's why your album is 22 songs long.

Humbe: Yeah, it's a long album.

Alison Stewart: It could be one of the reasons.

Humbe: It could be. I've always wanted to do a long album. I feel like before this new era of music, there used to be a lot of albums being released from huge artists that became this huge body of work that really represented that artist's era. That's something I feel that I don't want that to be lost in my project. That's something I always aim for.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. You're from the-- Is it the northwestern part of Mexico?

Humbe: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Monterrey. What aspects of growing up there can we hear in your music?

Humbe: Well, one of my most successful songs, if not my most successful, is the mariachi song. It's a song that I never actually intended for it to be-- I mean, nobody ever intends for a song to be as big as it gets. That song being that big made me realize how much mariachi I grew up listening to. I actually really leaned into it since I was a kid because my dad used to bring mariachi to my mom every single holiday, every single celebration. It's like part of us, part of our DNA.

Alison Stewart: We're going to hear that song later on, but you're going to perform Dieznoches from your album ENTROPÍA. What's the song about?

Humbe: Dieznoches, it's a song that's about basically getting stuck in someone, being stuck in someone. You're very into someone, and you met that person 10 days ago, and you still can't stop thinking about that person.

Alison Stewart: This is Dieznoches.

[MUSIC - Humbe:Dieznoches]

Alison Stewart: That was singer-songwriter Humbe with a live performance of his song Dieznoches. His new album Dueño del Cielo is out now. He's performing at Brooklyn Paramount tomorrow night and Friday night. I want to be over there. Is that Daniel, or is it Roberto?

Humbe: Roberto.

Alison Stewart: Roberto. I want to be over with you. You got all the good toys.

Humbe: He's got everything.

Alison Stewart: You got all the good toys.

Humbe: You have to see us during rehearsals. It's so fucking funny.

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. My guest is Humberto Humbe, your brother, Emiliano, who is a producer on the album. What makes you two a pair of good collaborators?

Humbe: I mean, we're siblings. It's beautiful. It's the fact of having blood into the songwriting era of everything and the production and everything. It feels like home. It feels beautiful. I don't know, it's something I feel you can feel in the music family.

Alison Stewart: Is it true that you record in your own home?

Humbe: I do. I do everything. I like to do it because, I mean, there's no way to sing like when you're on your own, first of all. Also, I mean, it's more comfortable in every way.

Alison Stewart: What can you tell us about going to an Humbe show for someone who hasn't been. Who's been hearing this on the radio and thinking, like, gosh, I really want to go to Paramount and check him out. What do they experience? What's your vibe?

Humbe: I mean, it's pretty fun. I feel like it's pure live music. I love bringing everything into the live session because every single song becomes real. In another way, it becomes so alive. I love that part. I feel like everyone should be expecting just to sing their hearts out. If you know the songs, just sing it out and have a good time. Honestly, I feel like the whole scenario, the whole production, things we've done into this tour, it's magical. It really goes hand by hand with the music.

Alison Stewart: When you're on stage, this is a hard question, what are you trying to accomplish? Because it is your job, in a way, you are to be creative, but you do have a job to do. You're a performer, you're an entertainer. What are you trying to accomplish?

Humbe: I mean, I could say projecting and give it all, but that's, I think, into the standard of an artist. You always want to give it all. I really am always looking forward into perfecting every single part of my craft.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting.

Humbe: I feel like wherever I step, I know every show's different. I know every show is a different war, a different thing, a different battle. I do like to try to memorize where I stand every single moment. I don't know. The more you memorize things, the more you have it from A to C and not just let it into, yes, it's just a fun moment, a party. No. If you have some things that are very standard and very [unintelligible 00:15:40] that you're strict about them, people can really tell. It feels very armed. It feels complete once you see it as an expectator.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Mexican singer-songwriter Humbe, who is performing live here at WNYC. His latest album, Dueño del Cielo, is out now. He'll be performing at Brooklyn Paramount Thursday and on Friday night. We're going to get to your big song. Your big song. That's exciting to say.

Humbe: Big song.

Alison Stewart: Your big song, fantasmas. Tell us what it's about.

Humbe: It's a song that celebrates life, celebrates death, celebrates everything that goes by. It's a song that wasn't really meant when it was written for my grandfather, but it ended up reminding me. I think about him every time I sing it. It's a song that has done so much for me, for my family, for my people, because it's a song that literally made them make pieces with the fact. It's a song that actually just makes you cherish the good moments.

Alison Stewart: What was your grandfather's name?

Humbe: Rafael.

Alison Stewart: Okay. Hello, Rafael, wherever you are. For fantasmas, a lot of people, especially around the Dia de Muertos, they post videos online using this song. What has that been like for you to see that?

Humbe: It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's hard because most of the videos are heartbreaking because it's-- I feel like that's the purpose of music. I think that music should be an outlet for emotion, and that's exactly what people are doing with it. As long as music does its job, I'm just happy to see whatever it does.

Alison Stewart: Even though it's heartbreaking, someone told me, and I didn't believe it when my parents died, but you wake up and you feel very sad, very sad, and then one day you wake up, and you have a warmth about your parents or about a person who has passed away. It transforms over.

Humbe: It develops into that.

Alison Stewart: It develops into that.

Humbe: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Alison Stewart: Can we hear fantasmas?

Humbe: Yes.

[MUSIC - Humbe:fantasmas]

Alison Stewart: That was singer-songwriter Humbe with a live performance of his song fantasmas. His new album is Dueño del Cielo. It's out now. He's performing at Brooklyn Paramount tomorrow night and Friday night. Thank you for putting up with my high school Spanish.

Humbe: I love it. Thank you for putting up with my high school English.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for being with us.

Humbe: Thank you. Thank you for your time.