New Album: ‘Era Yo Quien Pagó el Pato’ by Simply Shawn and Soleci

Shawn Cabezutto (Simply Shawn) and Aaron Soleci have teamed up to record ‘Era Yo Quien Pagó el Pato’, a new album released last week.  

Channelling influences from Bad Bunny to the Latin jazz of the Buena Vista Social Club, the album includes nine original tracks. 

Speaking to YGTV, Aaron says the record has restarted a friendship with Shawn that started in their teens. In fact, Aaron and Shawn were in a hip hop group back then, together with James the Heartist (Ablitt) and Kevin Olivares.

“We have reconnected the friendship with this album. We used to hang out together and sit in school together but life just directed us in different ways circles and now the record has reunited us!” he says.

Aaron says Shawn asked him to create some music for him and this quickly turned into the idea of collaborating on a record: “Shawn asked me if I could just make him a few beats to get in gear with the music again so I made some Latin style stuff, got inspired, and this turned into an album.”

The album is a collaboration in every sense: Shawn came up with idea for the cover and Aaron painted it.

The musical style of the new album is a stylistic departure for Aaron but he says he enjoyed the challenge. “I am usually more unorthodox and underground,” Aaron explains, “but I wanted to challenge myself and find a balance as Shawn prefers a more conventional approach, so we struck a balance between the two.”

Part of this balance was vocal—Aaron says that, although Shawn has “a great singing voice”, it is more high-pitched than his own “monotone singing” so the result was “interesting” with the layering of their vocals also working well. 

Aaron also explains that they have made selective use of AI for the instrumentals with other parts built up out of samples and original vocals.

Aaron ends his chat with us: "We are very excited about this record. While AI for the meantime gave us more variation musically, I have now learnt from it and wish to pursue more sample-based production.”

The album is available on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4UeWEy2QO4MMGVjPREnuj6?si=Rwl-EyAhQp6p85UkVmTlfA