Kali Uchis Announces Pregnancy Ahead of Spanish-Language Album ‘Orquídeas’ Release

Colombian American singer Kali Uchis released her fourth studio album and second Spanish language album Orquídeas Friday, Jan. 12. The album is receiving critical acclaim and features exciting collaborations including Puerto Rican reggaetonero Rauw Alejandro, El Alfa and JT, Karol G, and Peso Pluma. She’s spoken in the past about wanting to showcase the diverse sounds of Latin music and it’s evident in the range of songs including the doo-wop sound of “Heladito” to the pop “Igual Que Un Ángel” featuring Peso Pluma to “Te Mata” with its bolero influences. Ahead of the album’s release she made another major announcement revealing she’s pregnant. On Thursday, Jan.11 the 29-year-old dropped her video for “Tu Corazón Es Mio” and “Diosa” on Instagram sharing her pregnancy with partner Don Toliver.

“Starting our family❤️‍🩹 don’t take too long to get here little pooks, mom & dad can’t wait to share our life with you,” she wrote in a caption on Instagram.

Orquídeas comes less than a year after her awaited album Red Moon in Venus for which she went on tour throughout 2023. The album went on to reach the No. 4 spot on the Billboard 200 as well as No. 2 on R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Chart. In addition to her own tour, Uchis was also a top-billing performer at the biggest music festivals of the year like Lollapalooza and Coachella and Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival—a festival created by former collaborator Tyler, the Creator. She closed out 2023 with her single “Labios Mordidos” featuring Karol G debuting at No.10 on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart.

“I think it was perfect because for me it has that sense of timelessness like we were talking about. It’s also the national flower of Colombia. And this being my second Latin album, I feel like it’s always been important for me when I make a body of work in Spanish to pay tribute to a lot of the genres I listened to growing up and my heritage, so that played a part,” she told Apple Music. “And then I didn’t actually know at the time, but later I found out it’s actually the flower of fertility. And so then after I found out I was pregnant, I was like, oh, this is really so perfect because I have been pregnant most of the rollout, so it’s been a very different experience for me.”

Her first Spanish album, Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) reached the No. 3 spot on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart and set the stage for her sound and style in Spanish-language music. The album, which dropped in 2020, features her biggest hit “Telepatía”—a song about telepathic connection between lovers at a distance released during the pandemic. The lyrics move between English and Spanish seamlessly. The song went viral on TikTok, soon becoming a huge success topping the Latin Airplay chart and going so far as winning the Billboard Music Award for Top Latin Song in 2022 while the album itself earned a Billboard Latin Music Award for Latin Pop Album of the Year in 2021.

“I was working on Orquídeas at the same time I was working on my 2023 album, Red Moon in Venus. So some of these songs are from early 2021. I have so much to express when it comes to not just the different languages but also the genres,” she previously told Vulture. “This is probably the most cohesive and sonically solid album I’ve ever made. I was able to do that because I had so many other places to put all of these other things that are inside me: Red Moon in Venus was very down-tempo and soulful. Orquídeas is my up-tempo album. It has an eerie yet still classic, feminine, luxurious quality.”

Additional reporting by Virginia Isaad