When Puerto Rican singer iLe was 13, her parents got a divorce. Even though she remained on good terms with both of them, the experience left the future Calle 13 star confused. As she got older, she developed a taste for the torrid, lovelorn boleros that have always occupied a place of honor in the Afro-Caribbean canon, performed by such tropical icons as Celia Cruz and Tito Rodríguez .

“In a weird way, I was processing my parents’ divorce, and I connected with the intensity of the more spiteful songs,” she says. “I realized there was a lot of rage in those tunes, and that you could express a lot of different feelings through them.”

iLe ’s latest album, Como Las Canto Yo , is a tribute to her obsession with the bolero mystique. Recorded in a sudden burst of creativity, the ses

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