hurrengoa
maluca mala    bad is better Nathalie Yepez. 29-year-old first generation New Yorker. Born to Dominican parents in the Bronx. Grew up in Washington Heights and the East Village. She describes her music as ghetto-techno, latin-dance, hip-hop, rave music . This musical mix has not gone unnoticed — especially by Lady Gaga, whose beer-cans-as-rollers look in the video for “Telephone” appears to have been inspired by Mala’s headgear in her video for El Tigeraso. This is the story behind her name. I’ve always been Maluca, which means crazy in Spanish. It’s a nickname my uncle gave me as a child because I was so mischievous. I added the Mala part, which means bad, when I decided to really go for it in the music business. Maluca Mala started taking vocal lessons and going to open mike nights and poetry slams. At the beginning she was afraid of the stage so she joined a friend´s rock band, the Bowery Riots. She also toured with Amanda Blank as a back up dancer and singer until she felt she could fly alone.You know, you have to make stuff happen for yourself; you can’t just sit and wait for people to make it happen for you. Right now, she´s involved in different projects. She is filming what she calls ¨Wepasodes¨. In the first chapter she´s applying for food stamps. I just finished opening for Swedish singer Robyn in her U.S. tour, and since I’m not signed to a record label, that tour ended up putting me thousands of dollars in debt. It can be really expensive for an opening act. I got paid a performance fee, but it didn’t cover the costs for renting equipment, DJ, hair and makeup, my outfits. It all adds up, but it was well worth it. ¨Wepasode¨? tell us more about it. They are my Web videos that I’m playing on my site and on YouTube. It’s a day in the life of Maluca inspired by public access TV shows. It’s not reality TV, it’s more like surreality TV. Wepa is like the Spanish word for woo-hoo! or hoorah! It’s an exclamation. I wasn’t going to call them plain “webisodes”, know what I mean? I´m dominican, and we don't hold back, we are loud, passionate and not only in the stage.

Since we met Maluca, we don´t like good girls anymore.