The Story Behind "La Propuesta"

¿En qué momento era cuando el amor se volvió tan complicado?

Maybe love has always been this way, but it definitely feels different now. Dating in your twenties is… abysmal, treacherous, it sucks, all those synonyms in the thesaurus. In this digital age, people meet through Instagram, dating apps, mutual friends, college parties, bars, clubs... everybody has a history now (I can’t even say anything because I met my current girlfriend by sliding into her DMs). There’s all these situationships, talking stages, exes, hookups, so much that it almost feels impossible to meet someone without somebody carrying baggage from a previous relationships. I've heard so many stories around the DMV about people who spent years messing around and then they finally met someone they wanna settle down with only for their past to come back and complicate everything. I've experienced parts of it too, I mean I'm not a hoe or anything and I don't have a crazy body count, but I have been in relationships where someone's past made me really insecure and made it hard for me to want to continue. There's actually a term for it called retroactive jealousy, where you become insecure over relationships that happened before you were even in the picture. Yeah it's irrational, it isn't fair to your partner, because legally you can’t be mad, but ohhh is it real.

Myself recording “La Propuesta” at Luminary Sounds Studio, with Madd Maxx engineering me.

Growing up I was always the shy kid. Compared to some of my friends who had confidence talking to girls since middle school, I always felt left behind. I wasn't the guy with five different talking stages at once, I was struggling to get anyone to like me, so when I finally started dating, there were moments where I found myself comparing my own lack of experience to somebody else's past. Looking back, I see how unhealthy and insecure that mindset was because people's pasts aren't who they are today. People grow, they change, and writing this song helped me realize that. At least I think so.
I’ve always been a person who sees the good in people, which why I love superheroes (I’m actually listening to the Spider-Man: Brand New Day soundtrack as I write this so it feels very inspirational lol). But that's what “La Propuesta” is about, a proposition to leave the past where it belongs so two people can have a chance at building something real together.

I remember recording the original voice memo on September 19th, 2024 while I was driving to Silver Spring to record “UN CHANCE MÁS.” That's one thing I've learned, never trust yourself when you think, "Imma remember it later," because you won't. Record it immediately. I still have the voice memo saved in my phone so you can hear it. “UN CHANCE MÁS” came out August 2025, but “La Propuesta” wouldn't release until January 2026. It’s crazy seeing a song’s lifetime. Some get written and released within weeks (like “GRADUACIÓN”) and others sit on your laptop for more than a year before they finally are released into the world.

The beat came from the same producer, arsenikk, who produced the beat for UN CHANCE MÁS. If you read that breakdown, you'll remember I mentioned that he gave me a discount when I bought the stems, and because of that discount I was able to buy a second beat too. That second beat became “La Propuesta.” The beat was originally uploaded as a "Chris Brown, The Kid LAROI, Usher Type Beat," and the strings in it gave the beat this emotional feeling that separated it from a typical reggaetón club record. It could still make you dance, but there was something vulnerable underneath it too which has always been my favorite combo. Originally I had the project saved as "FRIDAY NIGHT" since that’s what arsenikk named it, but as I wrote, it had become a conversation about modern dating. I started to imagine the story through the perspective of a “DMV fuckboy,” the type of guy who parties all the time, talks to a bunch of different girls and never really taking anything seriously, grimey, but with girls as well. Neither one of them is innocent, they both have a past. When songwriting, not every song has to be about yourself, sometimes you're writing about somebody else or playing a character. This song is a little bit of all three because there are pieces of me in it, pieces of stories I've heard from friends, and pieces that I just made up but heard about in social media.

Once I understood what I wanted the song to say, everything else became easier. The chorus almost wrote itself.

"Dejemos el pasado y hagamos algo sagrado"

That line is the thesis of everything. I'm not saying the past doesn't matter, I'm saying it doesn't have to define your future. The line

"Ahora el amor cuesta"

came from that same realization. Love has a cost now, I think it always has. Trust and vulnerability is expensive. Letting someone see every version of you, even the ugly ones, is hard, but that's what makes it valuable in the first place. If love were easy, everybody would have it, so maybe that's why it's worth fighting for. Perhaps that's why I needed to write this song, I needed the lesson just as much as the character in the song did.

One of the most viral Reels from my marketing campaign for “La Propuesta.”

One thing I wanted to do differently with “La Propuesta” was be more honest about sex. Not because I wanted to be vulgar for the sake of being vulgar, but because it's a natural part of relationships and something that so many artists write about. If I'm writing songs about love, I don't think it makes sense to pretend that physical attraction doesn't exist. Up until this point, I had written about heartbreak, insecurities, commitment, faith, temptation, but I hadn't really explored desire in a direct way so I gave myself permission to go there in this song. I wanted the song to sound like a real college student, somebody who had gone to parties, had experiences, and was trying to figure out what love meant after all of that. That's where lines like

"Te vi en la fiesta, me perdí en tu mirada"

came from. I recalled all the crowded college house parties I’ve been to and imagined basically a movie scene where you lock eyes with someone from across the room and suddenly the music gets quieter in your head even though it's somehow louder everywhere else. Then there are lyrics like

"Quiero escucharte gemir y abrir tus piernas en mi carro"

If you've ever been around American college culture, you' know jokes about the backseat bandits.

"En clase siempre estoy pensando en como te lo quiero meter"

Everyone has had moments where they're sitting in class, at work, driving, doing something completely normal, and suddenly they have flashbacks. I mean that's just being human. I wanted the song to acknowledge that instead of pretending we're all saints. One of the first lyrics I actually wrote wasn't even one of those. It was

"Sé que no fui un santo, pero te quiero a mi lado"

Once I had that line, everything else started falling into place, it helped me guide the song and where it would go It’s not an “incel” song, the guy takes accountability as well. I do think body counts should go two ways, a guy who has slept around is also not innocent. Here he was admitting he had messed up too, and now he was asking if maybe they could both leave all of that behind. That's much more interesting to me than writing another song where one person is completely innocent and the other is completely evil. Most relationships are way messier than that.
One of my favorite moments in the song happens toward the end when I sing,

"Perreando y tomando, baby
Así nos conocimos, qué crazy
Abajo de la luna besando
Mami yo creo que te amo"

I love this part because it’s basically a drunk love confession. The words just slip out before your brain has time to stop them, it’s very personal, and I like it that way. The first time I told my girlfriend that I loved her wasn't during some grand romantic gesture, we were literally playing Fun Run on our phones and we were laughing so hard that I wasn't thinking anymore, and it just came out. The when I said it, then immediately realized what I had done. Sometimes the most meaningful things you ever say aren't planned. They just escape because that's what your heart was already thinking.
Another lyric I really love is

"¿Por qué no llegaste a mi vida antes?
No habría tenido tantas amantes,
romances de mentira en mi vida de cantante…"

I've heard so many people say something along those lines before. If they had known this amazing person was eventually going to come into their life, they would've done things differently, they wouldn't have wasted so much time chasing temporary relationships, they wouldn't have messed around as much, etc. It’s relatable. Then I connected it to music. "Vida de cantante" sounded cool because I imagined this future version of myself who had become this huge superstar dealing with fake love from people who only wanted him because he was famous. Of course that was entirely in my imagination. The reality was me, a small independent artist sitting in my room every week writing blog posts, hoping maybe somebody would randomly discover my music through Google. Which basically nobody does anymore, everybody discovers artists on TikTok now.
So why even have a blog? To be honest, it’s so I don’t forget.
These blogs aren't really for SEO, even though I joke about it all the time. They're for me. I want to remember why I wrote these songs, what I was thinking in the moment, what I believed in, what scared me, all of that. Twenty years from now, maybe I won't remember why I chose one lyric over another, or why a certain song mattered so much, but his lets me preserve that. It's like keeping a diary except instead of writing about my life directly, I'm writing about the songs my life inspired.

There was one section of the song that took me longer than almost anything else to write.

"Conozco
Con los que te has acostado
Dile a los otros
Que ya has encontrado
Un amor verdadero
Aunque nuestro pasado
No ha sido limpio,
Tú eres el cambio que yo deseo."

I kept rewriting those lyrics because I didn't want the song to come across as judgmental or insecure. I definitely didn't want it to sound like the narrator was some kind of cuck who was just accepting anything because he had no other option because that wasn't the point. The point was fairness. He had made mistakes too, he had his own past, so who was he to judge hers? He's making a conscious decision to stop holding yesterday against someone he wants to build a future with. That's what makes the proposition meaningful. To me, that's one of the most romantic things someone can do, and that's why I love the ending so much.

"El amor es difícil, pero creo que lo encontré."

It's simple and hopeful, like the ending of a storybook. A DMV storybook. Throughout the entire song, there's all this uncertainty, temptation, insecurity, all these human emotions, but finally, after everything, the narrator reaches this quiet conclusion. Love is hard. It always will be. But maybe... just maybe... this time it's real, and it can be real for you too.

Damn what a perfect ending to a blog post. Couldn’t have formatted it any better lol.