Behind The Lyrics: Manu Manzo Explains 'Después De Las 12'

During the last months, rising artist Manu Manzo has been explored new sounds ranging from R&B to reggaeton and trap. As a result, she launched her EP Después de las 12 under In-Tu Línea / UMLE, which represents the transition between projects and gives way to what would be a more elaborate production.

“It's music that you can literally listen to at any time of the day because I want to show that I can be present in different styles of music,” Manu Manzo tells Billboard.

And, to learn more about the EP and its songs, Billboard spoke with Manu Manzo to get more details about the story of each song. This is Manu Manzo behind the lyrics.

“Te Quiero Ver” (I Want To See You) with Feid

“Te quiero ver” is a song produced by Noe, who brought two new composers, Rivas and Luisette. We began to talk about the difficulty that sometimes we have as an artist to date people who are not part  of this industry, because maybe they don't understand the schedules or they can't deal with the fact that we don't have a schedule, meaning that we are away from home. Then we began how to include Feid because I wanted to record this song with him, we are under the same label, we also shared many friends in common. I had sent him five or six songs and the answer was I like them but not for me, I love them for you but not for me. So, from the beginning, we had thought, that Feid was part of the project and we started writing the song and we wrote it super fast, I think we had that session and another session to record the demo.

“La Mentira”

I produced “La mentira” with Julian, an incredible producer, a friend of mine. We got into a bar and I said to him, I want a song like tropical, urban, but so happy, that you can listen to go out to the beach and he said “okay”.  I got a trap, nothing to see but let's give it a try, and in the end, it ended up working because I had gone through a situation that I think that many women and many men also go through.  A girl tried to get into a place where nobody had called her, being a snake, being super hypocritical, saying things about me on my back but in my face being super cool, so we decided to grab that story and write it.

“Apaga La Luz”

I write a lot about things that happen to me or things that happen to me indirectly. When something happens to a friend, I write a lot of situations that happen to my friends with their partners or things in life. This story arose from a friend who had a boyfriend cheating on her to the point that he girl came and knocked on the door at twelve of the night, on a Sunday, because she didn't know he was with her, and it was all like that. I wrote this story with Christian Pagán and Larry Cole, who are some of the best writers I have had the joy of working.

“Pasión”

I wrote “Pasión” with UNLSTD, I am very fan of electronic music and that is something that I wanted to highlight in this project. Like every human being, we are multi-dimensional, not only because we like one style of music, it does not have to do that we might like another. I wrote this song with Rob and Shaun, who write a lot in English and Spanish and we decided to bring Spanglish to this song. I am Venezuelan but I grew up in Miami, I have that fusion of both places. And Rob said, let's start with the hook in English and then go to a verse in Spanish, and then again to the hook in English. We got to make a love song. Where we talk about no matter what will happen, it will not be easy but I will always be here for you. I have noticed that the people who like that song best are the Latinos who live here. Latinos who grew up in the United States, because they understand that wave of Spanglish.

 “Roll The Dice”

This song came from a Portuguese boy. I met him thanks to my publisher, Peer Music, he wrote to me and said, look, I want to work with you, and I accepted. He sent me a couple of amazing beats, in Portugal, they have a lot of influence from Brazil, by language and everything. I sent fusions of electronics with funk, with trap, some incredible beats.  The idea was to do something like rappers who talk about everything but don't talk about anything at the end. It still works and has some concept. The song makes that contrast with that side of me that maybe it is a trap, more rumba and then it ends like this in some jazz chords with an r&b voice, which took me to my essence, where I came from.

 “X La Ventana”

I wrote it with Alfonso Ordoñéz, my sound engineer who has a particular way of producing a song because it sounds like tropical, like Jamaican but has many urban beats that are not reggaeton. We began to write a rumba song and he came out with that phrase tiramos la casa por la venta (to throw the house out the window) which is very Latin. This is the lightest hearted song of the whole project.