Anthony Ramos has a lot to say.
After the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes began earlier this summer, In the Heights star, 31, had some free time. He decided to focus on his music.
“It all shut down, and I was like, ‘Okay, great, now I can shift gears,'” he says of the decision to release new music while talking to PEOPLE about his partnership with Dog Chow for this year’s Visible Impact Awards.
In June, he dropped “Villano,” his first release since November 2022, and quickly followed it up with “Se Fue” in July.
“It feels good, man,” he says of dropping new music. “It’s just good to kind of reboot.
Ramos had been working on the two singles for a while — about “a year and a half,” he says — but debated when to release them while juggling business commitments and working on some other songs.
“I also wanted to think about what story I wanted to tell [with] this next part of my life and music career,” he explains.
Between major career milestones — he directed the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film In the Heights and made his action film debut in June Transformers: Rise of the Beast — and after divorcing fiancee Jasmine Cephas Jones in 2021 after more than six years together, Ramos has gone through a lot of life changes in recent years. He says he wants his new music to reflect that.
“A lot has happened in the last two years,” Ramos shares. “And I asked myself, how do I want to… How do I see the full scope of what I want to talk about? And when I see that, how do I want to start it?”
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Jasmine Cephas Jones and Anthony Ramos at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2021.
Santiago Felipe/Getty
He says that “Villano” and “Se Fue” “felt like the best way to start this new chapter,” adding that both songs “are about difficult things, but they both have this pounding beat.”
In “Villano,” a fast-paced dance beat, Ramos seems to be talking about the end of her engagement to Cephas Jones as she sings, “So I leave you with a rock on your hand and I ran with my demons.”
He also alludes to infidelity in the song as he sings, “Caught me going wild in the club / Yeah, I did it … We were single, we were drunk / So I hit it / Next day tabloids with a comeback. ”
As for “Se Fue,” on which he sings, “I’m glad you’re gone / Love’s already gone,” Ramos says it’s the more emotional song of the two — despite sounding like an instant dance club hit.
“It’s a cry in a club song,” he admits.
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As for what’s to come, Ramos, who had huge success with the original Hamilton line-up in 2015, confirms that his third album is on the way.
“We’re definitely culminating towards the album,” he says, adding that “the third single is coming in a few months” and that it’s now “gaining momentum”.
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Part of the process also involved “doping collaborations with artists I love,” Ramos reveals, though he hasn’t given away any of those secrets just yet.
“I’m high,” he says. “A lot of good things are coming.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education