Given the otherworldly universe of his recent project, DUEÑO DEL CIELO, translated as Owner of the Sky, I expected HUMBE to be intense when speaking with him; instead, I was surprised by his gentle composure, softly spoken presence and philosophical mind. He carried a tenderness that quickly put me at ease.  

His genre-fluid project draws listeners into an expansive, dreamlike universe. Currently rendered largely in black and white, its visual world combines futuristic imagery with striking photography from the DUEÑO DEL CIELO tour. This 22-track double album moves between R&B-infused ballads, electronic production and reggaeton rhythms, carried by HUMBE’s emotive vocals. Exploring creation, grief, destruction and rebirth, the project finds HUMBE shedding layers of his old self and embracing change, while staying grounded in who he is as an artist and learning to create from a place of hope.

Recorded in Iceland’s near-constant daylight, DUEÑO DEL CIELO emerged from a spontaneous trip HUMBE describes as a magical experience.  Among the tracks is his viral single Fantasmas, a melancholic pop ballad blending acoustic guitars and emotive melodies. The track has now surpassed 600 million streams worldwide, reaching audiences far beyond Mexico and putting HUMBE at the forefront of Latin alternative pop. He recently concluded his European run with a headline show at London’s Village Underground and is set to continue his Latin American Tour dates in October 2026. 

1883 Magazine caught up with HUMBE three days after his London show to discuss the DUEÑO DEL CIELO tour, his evolving relationship with fashion, The Alchemist and embracing change. 

Hello, hello. Thank you for joining me!

Thank you for having me here.

Glad to see you in the flesh. So how was your show in London?

It was beautiful. It was the perfect wrap-up for this European life. And I felt so blessed to see so many people there. In every show, I still can’t believe I’m here – not on vacation. I’m here for work. It’s kind of surreal.

Yeah, it’s crazy. I think it’s been like three days since your show. What’s been the highlight of the show for you? Or something you haven’t stopped thinking about?

I really did feel like I connected so much with the audience that night. Like every night, but this night was so special because I made these different tweaks to the concert. I got the computer from my musical director.

And I didn’t sleep the night before the concert because I was tweaking some things that I wanted to – for them to sound better at the concert. Because I don’t have a band for the concert. I don’t have live musicians.

I had to tweak some things and produce some other things for some songs to sound better. And due to that, I enjoyed it much more. Like I could hear and feel more of the music. It was beautiful.

Oh, I’m so glad. 

Thank you.

Your Instagram can go from burning cars to touching ghosts and has huge cinematic visuals to sitting at home with your cats. Which version of yourself do you think your friends recognise the most?

Of course, the cat version. I mean that’s the version I’m the most. I do like to see Instagram. First of all, like the first way of seeing it, I see it as a work portfolio.

Because I do like to portray everything that I do as an artist. Though, like in the personal sense of Instagram, I feel like when I’m 40, 50 years old, I’m going to look back on it and I’m really, I’m going to see those types of pictures.

With my cats and my family. I don’t know. Like, oh, that actually human type of photos are going to, I think, hit harder when I’m older. I tend to keep it as more of a life portfolio. Right now, it’s a lot of work.

By the way, the work is really good. 

Thank you.

I love the black and white!

Do you?

Yeah, yeah.

I’ve been having some late nights re-organising them. It’s kind of a hobby. I love it. 

Was the visual concept orchestrated by you mainly? Or was it all your ideas funnelled into the concept?

I mean, it’s all a conglomeration of this, like the good photographer I have, who is my sister-in-law. And she really captures everything. She’s the perfect guy behind the camera. I feel like it’s a whole lot of factors that come together to end up looking like that. Because, of course, those photos, I don’t have a lot of power over the outcome when I’m on the show, you know? But she really does make it look like a dream every time. I hope it feels like it.

You literally look like a rock star.

Thank you! 

Is your more grounded life, with your family and cats, part of your creative process at this point?

It is. I feel like that’s one of the most important aspects of my creative flow, actually being in that sense, that space of myself. And I can normally find that when I’m either by myself or around people I love, and with my cats. They are an anchor to the ground for me. 

What are their names?

They’re Queso and Babas. And I have this third one called Gaya. Yeah, there are three. There are two Ragdolls and one Maine Coon. I didn’t mention Gaya at first because I’ve had Queso and Babas for like three years. And Gaya is brand new. So, I’m just getting used to actually having three cats right now.

So, wait, who’s watching the cats? Are they here? 

No, they’re back in Maine. I wish I could travel with them, but they get crazy on their planes. 

I also noticed on your social media there is a contrast between epic, almost mythological themes in your work and the more playful side of your personality. Do you see those as two different versions of yourselves, or are they connected?

I do feel like they’re connected. I don’t know in which way. I feel like it’s a weird way of connecting. But I feel like everyone is in a way. Everyone has a little chaos inside them, which creates that. I do feel like all the fashion sense, all the imagery that is going on in my social media really does come from just being true to the artist’s self, the artist’s persona I created. So, it’s kind of consequential to that.

Since you mentioned fashion, I was really intrigued by the fashion statements you made on stage. 

Did you like them? 

Of course!

Thank you. 

It says a lot about one’s character, being bold, not obeying rules, going for what they want, doing what they feel, embodying that presence on stage. What influenced that fashion style?

It was one of the discussions we had before the tour started. Because the last tour was like my awakening into the fashion scene on tour. Because before that, I was thinking very heavily about the thought that I had to be comfortable on stage, which is true. But you also have to look good. I mean, I cannot just be comfortable; I’m not going to go in pyjamas, you know?

So, on this Essentia tour, I had this awakening, in which I was like, it has to be coherent with everything I’m doing. And that was the discussion before this tour. And the main thing we actually brought back – because on Essentia we lost comfort, and we went straight into fashion.

But not the fashion I really love today, because right now I’m loving this much more. Because once you find comfort in everything, it actually makes you embody everything more, like whatever you’re wearing. So, the discussion was for this tour: what silhouettes are we following, what things are we following?

And what I honestly have been following is a pattern through these past years – the baggy, the cargo, all that feeling. And I’ve been dancing around it ever since I started this tour, I think. And it’s looking great. Like, I just kind of… I don’t know, for Brussels, I felt like there were so many flowers. And the outside was like that. Have you read The Alchemist? 

I’ve started it, but I haven’t finished it.

Well, read it. There’s this part in it, in which it says how the language of the world is difficult to understand, because there’s so much of it, you’re just living in it.

But if you try to get those little things, like seeing how Brussels has a lot of flowers, you can start just creating in a way. You line up with another creative frequency, I guess.

It makes complete sense because it’s also a way to connect with your fans. In a very large way, but also in a somewhat simple way. Do you ever get hot, though? I saw a picture of you in these big boots.

I do. Funny enough, those boots aren’t as hot as these ones. These past concerts, I normally, during the concert in Mexico, I have a three-hour concert.

It’s a long, long concert. So, I have time to start making some little tweaks to the outfit during the show. These shows, the Europe shows, had to be shorter, because it’s my first time here.

I don’t know if people were ready to listen to me for a whole lot of time. Maybe they would be sick of me. So I just made it a little shorter, which made it more manageable for me to not take anything off, to just keep the outfit as it is, because they were beautiful outfits. The stylist, Emma, really did a good one.

Your album feels enormous as a title, but a lot of your music deals with uncertainty, vulnerability, and self-doubt. Did the title come from a place of confidence or from wanting to understand those feelings?

From wanting to understand them. I mean, from regrowth, from being naked emotionally. I feel DUEÑO DEL CIELO is me trying to realise that grasping to my older self is not the solution.

You have to embrace change. You have to embrace whatever’s coming, because it’s honestly the only way in which you’re going to be happy. You cannot live in the future, you cannot live in the past, because that’s literally you shooting yourself.

100%. What advice would you give to someone who is trying to let go of their old self and become a new one?

Be very sensitive. That’s one thing I have. One tends to be so harsh on oneself, all the time. I used to expect so much from myself at a time in which, at that time, I didn’t have that much to give. I just had to do what I could with what I had and just sensitise myself to not put pressure on myself. And that made me look at what I had with much more love, with much more appreciation. Growth starts from there.

Good point. Good advice. You should have been a therapist.

I need one!

Your album feels closer to a world with its own characters, symbols and rules. How conscious are you of that whilst creating it?

I feel like that’s also consequential. Through creation, through that climax on each song, on each session, that comes from whatever connection I’m having at that moment.

Your album was recorded in Iceland, far away from places and people that shaped you. What did that isolation reveal about yourself that you don’t think you would have discovered at home?

Well, I feel like even if it sounds simple, literally distractions, like having friends around, tend to slow you down. So that was one of the things that was like, I can’t be slow right now. I have so much going on in my head that I need to put it into something.

And I cannot be, you know? So, part of it came from there. Part of it came from the fact that we’re growing up, my brother and I, everyone. We’re growing up, and we have the opportunity and the possibility to do it. So why don’t we? It all started at a sushi bar in Mexico City, and we just went for it.

And we booked the Airbnb, and we went a month later. It was so spontaneous, but that was part of the reason it felt so magical, and it felt so human. I don’t know. And it made me so much more sensitive as well to nature, to everything. It was summer in Iceland, so there was pure daylight most of the time. There were only two or three hours of blue hour. But everything was daylight. It was crazy, but the curtains worked well.

The blackout curtains?

Funny enough, they weren’t even blackouts. 

So, what were they? 

They were like normal shades. But they did work!

Well, good for you. At least you slept well. 

Yeah, I slept well.

You described this project as part of a trilogy exploring creation, destruction, and rebirth. Which of these stages do you think is the most difficult to live through in real life?

Funny enough, I feel it’s rebirth. It could feel like one of the most satisfying because you’re in bed, but that’s the moment in which you must decide where the fuck you’re going to be reborn into. You have to be clear, you have to be in your right mind, and that’s what all the other parts, the deconstruction parts, and everything is for. For you to be cleared, for you to be settled.

Out with the old and in with the new, I guess, isn’t it?

Exactly, exactly.

Some of your visuals feel almost like dreams, while others feel closer to nightmares. Do you think your music is driven more by hope or by fear?

There was this time in my life in which it was more driven by fear, which tends to make great music, Fear, honestly. But hope really has that; it’s like adding that – there’s this thing called MSG that they add to sushi – it accentuates flavours. I feel like that’s what putting hope into music does; it accentuates the feeling. So, I’ve been trying to do it more from the hope side. You can never just do it from one side; it’s a balance. But I have learned that living in fear is like dying every day, so you can’t be there. You can’t be there. Try not to be there.

Well, that track became a huge global success. Has success ever complicated your relationship with creativity, or does it give you more freedom to take risks?

At first, the first time I got it, it wasn’t even with Fantasmas. It doesn’t have to be a global hit for you to feel that you know? But you do tend to just give in to whatever people like to hear.

Whenever something works, as an artist, you’re like, damn, I’ve got to do that more. But when you have that moment of realisation in which you are actually just there to translate a language that many other people don’t speak, so you’re translating it to them, which is the creation of music – you tend to realise that you don’t really, you cannot force it, in a way. It loses the nectar.

I really do like your – is it similes? No, metaphors.

Metaphors, yeah.

I feel like they’re unique.

Thank you.

I’ve never kind of heard them before. It was really sweet. 

Thank you.

But that’s all my questions done.

I love that. This is one of the most peaceful and cool interviews I’ve done. 

Really?

Yeah, I love talking to you.

Oh, yay! That makes me really happy. You’re cool. You’re the cool one here. 

I wish I were.

But thank you so much. Thank you so much. So much for your time.

I can’t wait to read this. I’ll read it, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I hope you read it. 

I will read it. I’ll share it. Thank you. Thank you for your time. I loved it.

Yay!

DUEÑO DEL CIELO is out now, follow via @humbe

Interview Nancy Anekwe

Photography Krista Garza