El Malo is a love letter to a city and its mythologies. In this series of watercolor and pencil portraits on cotton paper, Sozyone Gonzalez pays tribute to the artistic figures who have shaped his imagination and fueled his creative path — Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe, Kase2, Barry de Vorzon and other icons of New York’s musical, cinematic, and street culture.

These works, delicate yet intense, go beyond admiration. They reflect a deep, sensory connection to New York: a city experienced through sound, style, movement, and memory — the rough grain of ’70s salsa, the charged atmosphere of The Warriors, the sleeveless jackets with gang insignias, the proud and defiant glances of its people.

Rather than documentation, Sozyone offers transfiguration. Each portrait becomes a distilled memory, a rhythm, a fragment of reverence. Paper turns into skin, into texture, into resonance. These faces don’t sit still — they hum, pulse, and echo.

El Malo is also the title of a legendary record. Here, it becomes an archetype: the elegant rebel, the asphalt poet, the quiet muse. By drawing them, Sozyone reveals what still flows from them into his own work: a poetic tension between style, sound, and resistance.