Guatemala

Album: Swaecation (2018)
Charted: 68 84
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This cut is from Swaecation, the Swae Lee portion of Rae Sremmurd's SR3MM triple album. The song finds Lee singing of his desire to whisk his girl away to some exotic location, "maybe to Guatemala."
  • The Central American country is not one that crops up often in song titles. The best known one we can think of is R.E.M,'s Lifes Rich Pageant track "The Flowers of Guatemala."
  • This song also features a verse from Swae Lee's Rae Sremmurd partner Slim Jxmmi, and is driven by Karl Rubin, TuneDaRula and Mally Mall's minimal Caribbean-styled backbeat. It shares sonic similarities with French Montana's "Unforgettable," which features Swae Lee's vocals. Indeed Lee has described "Guatemala" as part two of "Unforgettable."
  • "Guatemala" is bordered by Mexico to the north and west Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, Honduras to the east and El Salvador to the southeast. Here are a few fun facts from Encyclopaedia of Trivia about the Central American country.

    The name "Guatemala" comes from Nahuatl Cuauht?mall?n, "place of many trees." This was the name the Tlaxcaltecan soldiers who accompanied Pedro de Alvarado during the Spanish Conquest gave to this territory.

    In 1900, Guatemala had a population of 885,000. Over the course of the 20th century the population of the country had the fastest growth in the Western Hemisphere. Its estimated population in 2014 was 15,806,675.

    The first mass produced instant coffee was the invention of George Constant Washington, an English chemist living in Guatemala. In 1906, while waiting for his wife one day to join him in the garden for coffee, he observed dried coffee on the spout of the silver coffeepot. Intrigued he started experimenting, which lead to his discovery of easily dissolving coffee.

    In Guatemala, people make carpets of sawdust and flowers that measure up to a mile in length for Easter. The carpet is incredibly detailed and takes weeks to make. People walk over the carpet on their way to church.

    Guatemala City is the most populous city in Central America. In 2009, it had a formal population of 1,075,000, but the metropolitan population is believed to be at least 4.5 million by 2013.
  • The video was filmed in Guatemala shortly before the country's deadly volcanic eruption in June 2018. The Rae Sremmurd duo announced their intention to donate all proceeds to assist in the relief and care for all affected by the tragedy.

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