More than a Freestyle Queen

I wasn’t supposed to be a Lisa Lisa fan. I wasn’t even born when the New York City-raised Puerto Rican Lisa Vélez rose to fame as the vocalist for Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam. I missed the MTV debut of their hit track “I Wonder If I Take You Home,” and hitting clubs like the Palladium to hear “Can You Feel the Beat.” And yet, Lisa Lisa’s presence and the songs she belted out appealed to me — a suburban, religious Boricua growing up in Orlando when the Spice Girls and Brandy were the rage.

Raised by my Nuyorican parents in Florida in the 1990s and early 2000s, I, like most young people, was forced to listen to their music. These cassette, freestyle music era songs were played out to my millennial ears. But quietly, the desire and heartache Lisa Lisa sang about registered. As a young person with unrequited crushes on my older brother’s friends, I desperately wanted the older boys to feel the beat in my heart for them and wept when they obviously disregarded my doting feelings for the teen girls in their grade.

The connection went beyond Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam’s lyrics. I related to Vélez herself. As a young Boricua born in Queens, New York, I felt like Lisa Lisa reflected me. Her Spanish-marked New York accent sounded like my mother’s. Her curvy figure resembled that of the women in my family. And her confidence, timeless cool, and ability to demand attention were all inspirational, especially as a child who was already struggling with body image, identity, and bodily autonomy.

“I discovered...that there were Puerto Rican women and girls... who still feel empowered by Lisa Lisa’s discography”

In 2023, I worked on an episode for La Brega, a WNYC-Futuro Studios series about the Puerto Rican experience, where I discussed the ways Lisa Lisa was instrumental to my girlhood, particularly the way her classic, “I Wonder If I Take You Home,” allowed me to see a young Puerto Rican woman embrace her sexual agency for the first time, prompting my own sexual liberation journey, and how her music strengthened cross-generational bonds between my mother and me. While working on that project, I discovered that I wasn’t alone in my experience, that there were Puerto Rican women and girls — older than me, my age, and younger than I am — who still feel empowered by Lisa Lisa’s discography, her place in pop culture and continued self-assuredness.

This sentiment and appeal apparently went far beyond. So much so that a Lifetime biopic, “Can You Feel the Beat: The Lisa Lisa Story,” will be released tonight. The film, starring Puerto Rican actress Jearnest Corchado as Lisa, will depict Lisa’s journey from a teenager in Hell's Kitchen to a global music icon, diving into the formation of Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, the discrimination she experienced in the industry as a young Caribbean Latina, and the realities of navigating fame while secretly battling breast cancer.

We’ll soon learn what it was like to be under that pressure and spotlight at a time when few, if any, Latinas were at the front of groups that were topping both Pop and R&B charts. With that fuller picture about her life, I hope another wave of fans surges to carry the legacy of freestyle queens forward.