Helado Negro

The heart of Helado Negro’s music might be summed up by a line from his triumphant 2019 album, This Is How You Smile: “Brown just glows”. Born in 1980 to Ecuadorian parents living in South Florida, Negro (a.k.a. Roberto Carlos Lange) writes radiant songs that celebrate family, community, and the Latinx experience, itself. Lange got his start in the late 2000s recording lilting fusions of IDM and bedroom pop, often sung in Spanish, for Sufjan Stevens’ label Asthmatic Kitty. A prolific run of LPs in the 2010s came to a head with 2016’s Private Energy, which featured the breakout hit “Young, Latin and Proud”—a love letter to his heritage sung with characteristic tenderness. Since then, across albums like 2019’s This Is How You Smile and 2021’s Far In, Lange’s music—led by his warmly fluttering falsetto—has continued to glow ever more deeply, by turns vulnerable, contemplative and joyous.