“Un Amor de la Calle” returns to the fore through iLe, who reimagines the bolero written by Orlando Brito and made famous by Héctor Lavoe in 1975. Released with a stark visualiser, the song opens the path to her forthcoming album Como Las Canto Yo, due 24 October, a covers project dedicated to her lifelong relationship with the bolero tradition.

Based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, iLe co-produced the record with Ismael Cancel. The album’s concept stems from her teenage years, when her father introduced her to the genre’s charged narratives of betrayal and longing. “I’ve always loved boleros, especially when I was a teen,” she recalls. “At home we listened to a lot of salsa and rock, but my father introduced me to these brutal songs about unrequited love affairs that connected fully with the drama of my own adolescence.”

On “Un Amor de la Calle,” her arrangement strips the form back to piano, sparse percussion, and simmering electronics. Instead of Lavoe’s salsa-inflected swagger, the performance leans into intensity and restraint, her voice navigating spoken passages and held phrases with theatrical force. The track exemplifies her stated wish to capture the music’s streetwise, guitar-rooted edge rather than the lush orchestrations often associated with the genre.

“Un Amor de la Calle” also comes after her recent U.S. tour alongside Adrian Quesada’s Boleros Psicodélicos project, a collaboration that produced the single “Bravo.” Together with her forthcoming takes on works by Gilberto Monroig and La Lupe, it signals a project deeply embedded in Puerto Rican musical memory while asserting her own interpretive authority.

Stream the first glimpse of Como Las Canto Yo through iLe’s version of “Un Amor de la Calle” HERE