It takes a Virgo: Chicago-born musician Tatiana Hazel got her career going early. She first picked up a guitar and started writing songs as a precocious 11-year-old in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood, subsequently taking on keyboard, ukulele, and production skills for good measure. At 13, the multi-instrumentalist launched her YouTube channel, posting popular videos of herself singing vibrato-laced pop ballads pulling from her adolescent trials and travails while she accompanied herself on the guitar. The confessional tenor of her bedroom performances hooked fans, who rack up thousands of views on each of Hazel’s clips.
Her drive to be heard is definitely still evident now that she is 21. Tatiana’s track “Dímelo,” which we’re premiering on Remezcla, is a high-energy cumbia joint, so fluid that listeners may be surprised to learn it’s the first that she’s written in Spanish. The track’s layered melody is a sign of Hazel’s recent shift in focus to more heavily produced tracks — a pass through her recent SoundCloud offerings turns up “Time,” a digitized cry for mental peace in the face of heartbreak and the reverberating indie sound of “Everything.”
Born to parents originally from Durango, Mexico, Tatiana found herself taken by the power of “Como La Flor” during a Selena listening session on the anniversary of the Tejano queen’s death. “Dímelo” was the result of that inspiration. “My initial idea was to make an English song with cumbia elements,” she says. “However, when I began to write the words it just naturally came out in Spanish.” Call that connection a sign of the times. “With everything going on in America right now I feel more passionate than ever about representing my culture,” says Hazel.