t’s Wednesday night at the Box, the notorious erotic club in downtown New York, and Tokischa is stripping off her lingerie onstage. She cheekily steps behind a white, backlit curtain so that the crowd can only see the shadow of her body as she dances sensually. The room of devoted fans roar at each gyration.
A few moments later, Tokischa sports a skirt and cropped T-shirt as she lies face down and claws at the stage in painful desperation, channeling the heartbreak that overflows on her new album, Amor & Droga. She’s delivering this dramatic performance for an album listening event, and each theatrical move speaks to the duality at the heart of Latin music’s favorite provocateur.
“You guys think I’m just a horny bitch? I have a lot of feelings. I’ve gone through a lot,” the Dominican musician tells Rolling Stone. It’s the day after her listening event at the Box, and Tokischa is a quieter, more mild-mannered version of herself. It almost feels like she is a different person with her bare face and casual low-rise jeans, though the graphic T-shirt she wears does feature a naked woman with a bushy crotch and the slogan “Happiness is a tight pussy.”
“The world got to know this cute bellaca [wicked] girl that was just horny, writing songs in her room,” Tokischa says, referencing the past five years she’s spent in the spotlight, courting controversy and shaking up the music industry with her sexually explicit lyrics and provocative demeanor. Now, with her long-awaited debut album, the 30-year-old is showing a more emotionally-charged side of herself and her art. “I wanted to take the inspiration from what I lived at the time and bring it into this new space and show the world what really happened,” she says.
Tokischa first started releasing music in January 2021. By that summer, she’d gotten co-signs from major stars like J Balvin and Rosalia, jumping on tracks for each. The next year, her riotous, sexually liberated energy caught the attention of Madonna, and the pair collaborated on a remix of “Hung Up.” Since then, the fans that fell in love with Tokischa’s IDGAF attitude have been clamoring for her debut LP. So what took her so long to get her own full-length project out into the world? Partly, Tokischa blames management woes.
“The lack of experience in a project can mess up a lot of things,” she says. “The budget for this album was crazy because I was not experienced.” She claims that she spent nearly a million dollars of Warner Music Group’s money to make the project.
This past January, Tokischa sorted the business side of the album’s release and focused on how to bring it out into the world. Over 17 tracks, Amor & Droga chronicles her toxic relationship from a decade ago, when she struggled with substance abuse issues in the Dominican Republic, and how each moment led to her new, healthier reality. (She’s been sober since 2020.) Tokischa pulls no punches, showcasing her sexual desires alongside her family trauma and every dark thought in between. Below, Tokischa breaks down key tracks off the album, and just like on the album, she doesn’t spare any of the raw details.
“Mi Novio”
I was 20, 21 when I had the idea for this song. I first came to Miami and I met Diplo. I’m a big fan of drum and bass and I was like, “I want to make a drum-and-bass song for my album.” I had an idea of how I wanted to tell this story, to start from the beginning of when I met this guy [in the Dominican Republic]. Diplo put out that beat and I just started writing. I wanted to make sure everybody knew that’s when my life changed. That’s when I tried ecstasy for the first time. I started seeing the world differently.
I remember we were at the Malecón in front of the open sea. I was feeling high and the sea called to me: “Jump in, you’re a part of this. Come now, in the middle of the night.” That’s the beginning of the story. I loved the high. I loved having fun. I loved tripping, but I didn’t want to do it every day. [My boyfriend and I] had a lot of problems at that time and we used to physically fight.
“Vacía”
This song went through a lot of different sounds with the instrumentals because the vocals were so strong. Those are some of the best vocals I’ve ever done. I wrote it in such a different environment, too. It was a few years ago, in 2022. I was away in Jarabacoba on a mountain with my friends and my vocal coach and she was playing guitar. I think that’s the first time I ever wrote a song on a guitar. But then I was like, “I want this beat to be kind of alternative. I don’t want it to be a ballad.” We reworked it for the album and I added a little bit of reggaeton and it hit really nice and smooth. It took me a long time to finish it, but it was worth it.
ADVERTISEMENT“Banda”
This song is so old, I still have the demo. When I wrote that song, I was with the guy [that “Mi Novio”] is about. The relationship lasted like three, four years maybe. It was really hard [to write], because I was heartbroken because of him. He had this thing where he never left the house; I had to beg him to come over to my house 20 minutes away. When I recorded that song, I was screaming. But it was so hard to recreate that emotion because I’m so happy in my life now. I have a beautiful boyfriend that loves me and cares for me. It took me a few sessions to get into that emotion, specifically, and feel it.
“Perreo Llorando”
I love this album because a lot of the songs are so old. People might think, “Oh, now she wants to do this type of music after she got lit.” No, these songs are old. This was my first time doing a reggaeton song with an actual Puerto Rican producer [Súbelo Neo]. We worked on the beat and I was like, “I like raw dembow. I like raw reggaeton. I want to feel that drum hit. I want to feel the bass.”
I made this when I first came to Miami in 2021 and I saw how everything was sad. I had stopped doing drugs in 2020, so I was still super sensitive to everything. I saw all of these people outside in Miami, rich people with all the money in the world, all the Gucci, and everything is still sad. So I wrote the song and I recorded it and it was instant. I knew it was an amazing song. But my management back in the day was like, “We can’t put that out now… We have to keep doing dembow.” That’s bullshit. As an artist, we should be allowed to just go whatever direction we feel like. This song was kept from the world all that time.
“Diva y Depresiva”
This one comes right after me begging this guy to call me [on the track “7pm”]. So I’m like, “Wait, I’m that bitch. I’m the diva.” I’ve learned that. I was so obsessed with my first boyfriend. When I moved, my idea was to try to see him again and propose to him. I brought a ring to propose to this man. I was so delusional. The day that he was going to return to D.R. and we were going to meet up, he never showed up. I was so sad. That day, I did molly. And when I was high, it just hit me. I felt so stupid. I was like, “What is wrong with me? I’m so creative and amazing and I’m crying over this guy that I was with a few years ago.” I got back to myself. I walked down the park with my blunt and my beer and I was like, “I’m that bitch. Watch out everybody.”
“Lola”
She’s one of the only friends that I have from back in the day, like 10, 11 years ago when I was living what I’m talking about on the album. In the song, I’m talking about our relationship, her mood swings, her relationship with her sister and just how we used to be. We used to drink rum and listen to this song “Tear You Apart” that she showed me from the band She Wants Revenge. We used to listen to that song on the train all the time. The inspiration for the sound [of “Lola”] came from that song. We just reunited last night. She came [to the Box] and I showed her the song. She was like, “You’re making me blush!” When I make a song about somebody or show somebody a song, I like to do it in person.
“Mona”
On that song, I’m rapping hard. When I was working on the album in 2025, I was like, “Maybe I could invite [Spanish rapper] Kase.O because I already know him.” He matched the energy perfectly. I’m so proud of that one. That collaboration, it’s like part of my core. KaseO is a rapper that I appreciate and I love. I used to listen to him a lot when I was a teenager. Everything that he raps, it’s so personal, and he’s a Pisces, too. I just felt connected to his music. I know that people that are fans of hip-hop en español, they’re going to love it because he’s an icon.
“Su Frida”
You know what’s so funny about “Su Frida”? I held back a lot of things that I was saying there because I didn’t want to hurt people. It was too raw. When I wrote that song, I was mad at everybody around me. I had a lot of family trauma. I grew up around a crackhead. I grew up around a thief. I grew up seeing and saying a lot of crazy things and then it took me years to unlearn that behavior. I’ve suffered a lot and I wanted that song to be the second to last because I wanted to give context.
In the D.R., the word sufrido [sufferer] was popularized by [rapper] Trentisiete. Whenever somebody in their art is sad, it’s like, “Estoy sufrido hoy, me siento como un sufrido, yo estoy solo.” [Trientisiete] was going to be on the track, but then he told me, “I’m not suffering enough to be here. I need to go and suffer some more because of what you’re saying here.” The official Dominican sufrido was like, “It’s too sad.”
“Nani”
The last song of the album I decided to call “Nani” because that’s the nickname my dad gave me. I wanted to give the album a happy ending by talking about my actual relationship right now. My boyfriend calls me “baby girl,” and I just love it because it gives me this peace and it’s so loving. He’s the sweetest and I’m very happy and grateful. Then, the song transitions into me saying “daddy issues.” Even though [he’s] perfect, I’m still going to have trust issues. It closes the album with a happy ending, but I still have that darkness running through.
Courtesy of Martin Garrix
Louis Van Baar*
Liam Payne (left) and Harry Styles of One Direction onstage during the 2013 American Music Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Nov. 24, 2013
Harry Styles Finds the Right Words on Liam Payne Tribute Song
For the past seven weeks, Harry Styles has reserved two minutes at each of his Madison Square Garden shows to reflect on the last time he gathered this many people in this room. Four years have passed since he performed 15 record-breaking nights at the venue during his Love on Tour. Now, every night at the new Together, Together shows, which span 30 nights at MSG, he acknowledges that “a lot of life happened to me and landed on me in ways that maybe it hadn’t before.”
Styles doesn’t usually go into much more detail; he typically just describes those in-between years as “a great reminder for me of just how wonderful and beautiful, difficult and inspiring, and also how fragile a life can be.” He encourages the audience to look around at each other and celebrate the community they’ve built together. Then he dives into “Sign of the Times.” It happens every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday like clockwork. But when he delivered this speech on Friday, Oct. 16, there was a shift. It didn’t conclude in its usual way.
Instead, Styles turned his attention to the banner commemorating his 15 consecutive nights at the Garden in 2022. “It means a lot to be able to look up there at my name up there from the last tour,” he said. “There are so many people, friends and people that I’ve worked with, that I would’ve never been able to do this without.” Two years ago, he continued, he lost one of those pillars. Friday’s show fell on the same day as the second anniversary of the death of Liam Payne, a loss that time has not made it easier to acknowledge. “I’m sure a lot of you have been through something similar,” Styles said. “I hope you haven’t.”
A frequent assessment of Styles, both among his fans and those who’ve only encountered him at a distance, is that he often talks at length before getting to the point. He recognizes it himself on the Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally song “Coming Up Roses,” where he sings about fumbling his words. But recently, comments about his long-winded way of speaking have started to feel like purposeful misreadings. There are clear and carefully considered thoughts present between his starts and stops. Anyone truly listening will pick up on those threads.
Styles cut himself off a few times during his speech on Friday. He tried to talk for a second about looking after each other, and repeated his point about the banner and the people who’ve supported him. He never mentions Payne by name, instead referring to him as a friend, which somehow became a point of criticism from some fans. The context is clear enough. Still, he seems to know it’s a gamble to expect understanding, especially when the conversation grows more complex and personal.
After about a minute and a half, Styles figured it best to show us what he means rather than tell us. “I’m gonna sing a song I wrote two years ago for my friend,” he said before premiering “Wise Enough.” The sullen tribute to Payne settled the room into a cool near-silence, punctured by quiet gasps and muffled crying. It was beautiful, devastating, and deeply exposing to watch Styles share his grief with 20,000 people in the best, and maybe only, way he knows how.
Earlier this year, Styles told Zane Lowe about the acute dread surrounding the expected performance of his mourning. “Full transparency, even the idea of talking about it, I struggle with that a little bit. There was a period when he passed away where I really struggled with acknowledging how strange it is to have people own part of your grief, in a way,” he said. “I have such strong feelings around my friend passing away. And then suddenly being aware there’s maybe a desire from other people of you to convey that in some way, or it means you’re not feeling what you’re feeling.”
Artists often describe the act of sharing new music as a change in ownership, something that is no longer their own once it has been handed over to an audience. “Wise Enough” feels protected from this. It would be confounding to see Styles ever record and release it in any official capacity. The song is openhearted in a way that exposes deep scars, anxious in a way that worries and fidgets about time and how it passes, and inconsolable in a way that doesn’t make the futile attempt to fight through anger, regret, or sadness.
“I can tell you what it’s like to bury friends on Wednesday nights/Gather in a garden around the fire,” Styles sings in a particularly cutting verse on the song, which concludes with an honest admission: “I’m not wise enough to call for a conversation/And then back it up, right?/Like you’re in the sky.”
Celebrity doesn’t obscure grief. It doesn’t come with a script for what to say when someone is sorry for your loss, or when they recollect their own version of the person you knew. No one really has the right words for these moments. Over the weekend, fans debated whether “Wise Enough” is actually titled “What Is Enough?” Styles introduced the record so briskly it was hard to decipher. The question of adequacy feels similarly impossible to answer.
Grief is so plain in how universal it is, but so complex in how and when it chooses to present itself. It can be policed only as much as it can be predicted, which is to say barely at all. That Styles let us into his now yearslong search for some semblance of understanding — knowing how his words have been picked apart before for far lesser things — shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Styles never acknowledges that banner at MSG. It’s not for lack of gratitude — he cried when it was unveiled. But the point he has reiterated every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday since the end of August is that the achievement is something that must be shared because he couldn’t have done it alone. He talks about being on stage as if what happens in that room exists far beyond and outside of himself, something that endures even in his absence.
It’s true in a way. There’s muscle memory tied to the music. It’s in the spinning, dizzying way fans dance to “Satellite,” or the way they wildly kick their feet and make the building shake during “Kiwi,” a song he brought back to the set just for New York. It’s just like before, but still so different.
Friday night continued as usual after “Wise Enough.” Styles belted out “Sign of the Times” in the sobering way he always does, then “Aperture” let in a cathartic flood of strobing lights and pulsating beats. The emotional whiplash took physical form as fans consoled one another, holding out their hands to help up friends and strangers who crumbled to the floor at the conclusion of the tribute. Some were crushed by their memories of loving One Direction, and the care they hold in their hearts for Styles. Some were just as wrecked by their own personal losses.
A lot of life and loss can happen in four years, as Styles says each night. For some people who were at MSG on Friday, there are friends present in their memories from the last tour who are missing from the new ones they’re making. The lyric “You dance until you’re tired/No, you don’t, and now you never will/Will you?” surfaces their own devastation completely separate from what inspired Styles to sprawl those words on a page. How do you dance to “Aperture” — the beating heart of this show in its declaration that “we belong together” — after hearing something like that?
You take the hand of the friend or the stranger who pulled you from the ground and use it to lead each other back to the dance floor. When Styles talks about community and stresses the importance of caring for one another each night, he reminds everyone of the fragility of a moment, and urges them to cherish every second they get. To dance wildly and sing loudly and wrap their arms around each other. To hold tight to what’s here right now.
It’s all any of us have, so it has to be enough.