No Hablo Espanol

Album: Which One Am I? (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • Which One Am I? is a solo children's album from longtime Backstreet Boys member Howie Dorough aka Howie D. The lead single, the Spanish-flavored "No Hablo Espanol," describes the challenges the half-Puerto Rican singer encountered growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood in Orlando, Florida.

    Howie told us in a 2019 Songfacts interview: "Being a kid who grew up in a mixed family, Mom is Puerto Rican, Dad is an Irish-American, you're trying to find your identity with what you can relate to, and what people relate to you. A classic example is 'No Hablo Español.' People used to always look at me and automatically assume because I have olive, darker skin that I spoke Spanish, and unfortunately as a little kid I didn't really learn Spanish. We grew up in a really Anglo-Saxon neighborhood, and as a kid with a lot of brothers and sisters, we never thought we needed to learn Spanish because there were no kids that were speaking it around us. My mom was also trying to learn English and didn't want us kids to have to grow up with an accent, especially in the '70s when it was a very judgmental time."
  • Although he doesn't speak the language fluently, Howie did eventually learn to speak Spanish. He's also a big lover of Latin music, which inspired the sound of the tune.
  • Howie and his wife, Leigh, have two boys. At the time of the album's release, James was 10 and Holden was 6.
  • In the music video depicts Howie's childhood, with his son James taking on the role of the young singer and Howie's mom, Paula, portraying her own mother (Howie's grandmother).

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