“I will have to deal with alcohol addiction all my life”

His father encouraged him to rhyme words when he took him to school, so over time Guillermo Rodríguez Godínez, a computer engineer by training, ended up becoming a rapper (and a rhyming ‘crack’) under the name of Arkano. He has just turned 28 and has celebrated it by releasing ‘More strong than ever’, a song he recorded in Mexico with ‘Aczino’ and which reveals his dark side. “It’s a destructive subject,” he says.

– Well, nothing hits him.

–Yes, but to be strong you have to accept the darkness. My first sentence in the song is: «The sad face you make me when you tell me about your life is the one I make to my psychologist when talking about relapses».

-Relapses, what kind?

-Alcohol addiction. I think it’s something I’m going to have to deal with my whole life. I am a very hedonistic person. The most serious part came in the quarantine. Before covid, my life was adrenaline spikes all the time: trips, events… Suddenly that stopped. And I needed to find those emotions somehow, so I started looking for them in alcohol.

-I was alone?

Yes, I spent the quarantine alone. And I ended up practically drinking every day. I left quite touched. Then I went to a psychologist who is an expert in addictions. I went nine months without drinking a single beer to try to learn how to extract pleasure from natural sources, to rebalance myself. And those nine months without drinking coincided with the recording of ‘MasterChef’.

-There he gave an angelic image. And that he has been world champion of the Battles of Roosters…

-It is that in my day to day I am not a rooster. I’m just another kid. I see myself as a small child. The bravado is not one of the characteristics of my person. But in rap competition and ego are very present and I find it a very fun game as an artist.

-Did you have a crisis when you discovered that you liked a boy?

–Yes, in my song ‘Único’ I tell that when I considered the option that I could be gay I pushed it out of my mind, even with guilt. I told myself: «No, no, no, you only have to like women». But today that is more than solved.

–With Eduardo Navarrete he had a shameless flirtation.

-It’s that I try to take my bisexuality naturally. That if a 14-year-old boy follows me and suddenly likes another boy from his high school, I don’t feel guilty about it. That the image of a successful rapper does not have to be that of a straight man who flirts with a bunch of girls.

I think his first girlfriend treated him horribly.

–We were both teenagers and we had the emotional intelligence of a potato, ha, ha, ha… I have taken advantage of the music to let off steam. But I’m sure she’ll have a lot to vent about me.

–Why did you kiss an opponent in the Battle of Gallos?

–Well, I’m still wondering, heh, heh… It was an impulse. The times I have improvised best is when I have felt like a child on a playground. It was an international final, in Chile, and I had to play against the Argentine champion, a tough, aggressive guy. In one of those he put my face so close that I gave him a little kiss. I didn’t think so. As a result of that I ended up kissing on stage with many rappers.