“Let’s just say this album was therapy for me,” Maluma tells Apple Music. “I went straight to my roots.” It’s understandable that Loco X Volver—loosely translated to “dying to go back”—found its emotional anchor in the people, and places, closest to his heart. In 2024, Maluma’s daughter Paris was born; in 2025, he lost his beloved grandmother. The euphoria and grief he experienced throughout this period rearranged his priorities: He was as moved by watching a sunset with Paris as he used to be by the elated screams of a sold-out crowd, and he found himself savoring the details and his surroundings more. “Paris’ birth made me take a veil off my face,” he says. “It’s like I took off a character that I worked on for many years. I built it, and the time came to let it go.” This newfound clarity inspired him to look homeward, to explore familiar and familial sounds in the wake of such transformational change: the salsa his grandfather loved; the Colombian folk music he grew up listening to; the beats that catapulted him from Medellín to the global stage. “Tu recuerdo” invokes his abuelo’s collection of Fania albums; “BOTERO,” his collaboration with Arcángel and NTG, is a throwback to his earlier work in reggaetón (“People can’t forget that I blew up making music for the club”). He sought out Colombian musical greats to produce, namely Andrés Castro, known for his work with Carlos Vives, to helm “Loco x Volver” and vallenato icon Felipe Peláez for “El Vallenato.” And he even dedicated an entire song to cheeky street slang with “Ganosa”: “This is the vocabulary we have in Medellín. It means ‘horny.’” But it’s the title track that holds up the biggest, most undeniable mirror to Maluma—the grown one who’s returned to himself, and the little kid with the cocked eyebrow on the album cover. “I’m a happy person, but when I’m complete is when I’m with my people,” he says. “I know that many people listening to me feel the same way. This is a tribute to those people, too, so they feel close to their homeland every time they listen.”