Arca / KICK ii / 2021
Rakata
cocky, predatory-playful, euphoric, building toward ecstatic abandon
"Rakata" is Arca's detonation of classic reggaeton vocabulary -- the perreo ad-libs, the dembow percussion chatter, the come-hither taunt -- rebuilt as a vehicle for unapologetic sexual and self-mythologizing appetite. The track moves from boastful seduction into a dissolving chant of nonsense syllables, as if the body overtakes the lyric entirely.
sexual appetite and self-possession reclaiming reggaeton/perreo lineage transformation and witchcraft as metaphor dissolution of language into rhythm eye contact as power play
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addresses a desired partner directly (shifting between 'tú' and 'papi'), taunting and inviting at once. The voice is confident to the point of self-mythologizing, calling herself a 'good witch' and offering herself as sustenance -- there's no unreliability here, just escalating intensity.
What happens
The song opens with a boast about devouring the world out of pure want, then narrows that hunger onto a specific target through a flirtatious dare about eye contact. A bridge of witch/food imagery recasts the speaker as both temptation and consumable. A call-and-response command section pushes toward physical release, and the final third abandons sense-making lyrics altogether for a chant that functions as pure rhythmic/vocal texture, ending in a title-drop ad-lib and a looping, almost hypnotic repetition of a single phrase about watching/being watched.
How it's built
The song is built less on verse-chorus logic than on escalating vocal loops: a two-part boast-and-dare sequence, a short spoken-sung bridge, a commanding hook built on repetition of a single instruction, then a long percussive outro section where lyrics give way to chant syllables. The structure mimics a club track's build rather than a pop song's arc -- each section intensifies rather than contrasts.
Section by section
Opening boast
“que me como al mundo”
The speaker announces an appetite so large it swallows the entire world, immediately establishing scale -- this isn't flirtation, it's cosmic hunger compressed into a dancefloor line.
The dare
A flirtatious challenge about whether the other person looked turns voyeurism into a game with stakes; the speaker claims to have already caught them looking, flipping who holds power in the exchange.
Percussive bridge
References to drums and a traditional instrument throbbing underscore that the track's real subject is rhythm itself -- the body responding to bass before responding to meaning.
Witch/food bridge
“soy tu cena”
Casting herself as dinner and as a good witch merges vulnerability and control -- she offers herself up while framing that offering as a spell she's casting, not a surrender.
Command hook
A repeated conditional instruction addressed to a partner turns desire into choreography, inviting rather than demanding, while insistent ad-libs underneath keep tension rising.
Chant outro
Lyrics dissolve into a looping nonsense chant and a watching/being-watched refrain, suggesting the song has moved past communication into pure trance state -- the final gesture of a track that's been building toward losing language altogether.
Craft
- appetite metaphor
- Devouring the world and later offering herself as a meal collapse hunger, sex, and self-worth into one image, making desire sound both cosmic and edible.
- direct address / dare
- The repeated challenge about whether the listener looked turns the song into a seduction staged in real time, implicating the listener as a participant rather than an observer.
- ad-lib as structural device
- Reggaeton's conventional background interjections are pulled to the foreground and looped until they become the song's actual content, blurring the line between ornament and substance.
- glossolalia / vocalese
- The late chant section abandons semantic language for rhythmic syllables, literalizing the idea that desire or trance exceeds what words can hold.
- witch imagery
- Framing herself as a benevolent witch recasts seduction as a kind of magic or spellcasting, giving her sexual confidence a mythic, slightly dangerous charge.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats "Rakata" as Arca reclaiming the DNA of 2000s reggaeton -- a genre she grew up adjacent to -- and pushing its machismo-coded ad-libs and dares into a queer, self-authored register where hunger and transformation (the witch, the meal, the dissolving chant) are sources of power rather than objectification. An alternative reading takes it more literally as pure club hedonism, a track meant to function physically on a dancefloor with minimal interest in subtext; the lyrics' slide into syllabic chant supports this less-symbolic view just as well as the metaphorical one.
Context
Arca has spoken in interviews and through her broader catalog about reclaiming reggaeton and dembow rhythms from a trans, Venezuelan, diasporic perspective, and "Rakata" directly echoes the title and ad-lib vocabulary of a well-known 2000s reggaeton hit, though I'm not certain of the specifics of that lineage beyond the shared title and genre markers. KICK ii as a whole leans into maximalist club and reggaeton textures more than the glitchier material on her earlier records, and this track fits that shift.
Listen for
- How the ad-libs (the 'tá-tá' and chant syllables) gradually take over more of the song's runtime than the sung lyrics
- The shift in percussion texture between the sung sections and the chant outro
- The way direct address shifts between a general 'you' and the specific 'papi,' changing who's being spoken to
- The self-mythologizing language (witch, meal) layered over otherwise straightforward sexual boasting
- How the song's energy keeps escalating rather than resolving into a clear chorus/drop structure
About Arca
Alejandra Ghersi Rodríguez, known professionally as Arca, is a Venezuelan musician and record producer based in Barcelona, Spain. She initially began releasing music under the name of Nuuro.
b. 1989 / Spain
Full biography and catalogue