Mon Laferte’s “La Mujer” takes on a whole new meaning thanks to fresh lyrics and a dream collaboration with Gloria Trevi.

“The song is more powerful now,” says the Chilean singer-songwriter. “It needed fresh air and I thought, I wanted to sing with another powerful woman and, well, the first one that came to mind was Gloria.”

The change in the lyrics is subtle but poignant. It went from “I am that woman of the overdose. I am that woman that you know so well” to “I am that woman. I am your overdose. I am that woman that you know nothing about.”

“It’s a song I wrote years ago and had stopped singing because I didn’t like the lyrics anymore. It was toxic,” says Laferte. “But since the pandemic paused many things, I had the time to revisit the song and rewrite certain parts for the new album.”

After reaching out to Trevi, the Mexican star kept it honest. “First, I thought, great because I love her work. Mon is transparent and brave,” the “Pelo Suelto” singer tells Billboard. “But I am also an artist that has to be honest and transparent with the music that I sing so I needed to hear the song first in order to say yes. When I heard the lyrics, I thought ‘Wow.’ I thought, ‘I am that woman.’ I identified.”  

Laferte also talked about collaborating with Trevi, an artist whose inspired her music and writing. “I used to sing her songs when I was little, and I was known as Gloria’s double at our school because I was the one with the personality that could get away with impersonating her. I wore my ripped tights, would dance with my hair almost sweeping the floor,” Laferte shares.

Adding, “I tell Gloria that she has inspired a lot the way I write my songs because they come from an honesty that I learned and found in her songs because as she says, she’s an open book, and that’s how I write my songs too. I’m not telling fictional stories bur rather my life is in each song.”

The new version, which premiered Wednesday (April 7), lands on Laferte’s sixth studio album, aptly titled Seis, out Thursday. On it, the 37-year-old singer pairs honest, vulnerable and commanding lyrics with corrido tumbado, banda and mariacheño sounds.

Above, watch the highlights from our interview with the pair, where Trevi explains why she said yes to collaborating with Laferte and why both think the label “female empowerment” has turned into a cliché.

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Bassnectar and a variety of companies connected to the electronic music producer have been named in a new lawsuit alleging sexual abuse, grooming, human trafficking, the manufacturing and possession of child pornography and more. His attorney denies all claims.

On Monday the Nashville-based firm Laffey, Bucci & Kent filed of a lawsuit against the producer born Lorin Ashton, his label Amorphous Music, Bassnectar Touring, his management companies Red Light Management and C3 Presents and his charitable organization, Interactive Giving Fund.

The plaintiffs, Rachel Ramsbottom and Alexis Bowling, allege that Ashton sexually abused them as minors. Additionally, the myriad other companies named in the suit are accused of engaging in “a human trafficking venture.”

“While this is just the first two lawsuits that have been filed,” Brian Kent, one of the attorneys involved in the lawsuit, tells Billboard, “I don’t want to definitively say that these are the only two.”

Neither Red Light Management nor C3 Presents — a management and production company behind events including Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza — responded to Billboard’s requests for comment. The suit also alleges that Ashton used his Interactive Giving Fund charitable organization “to target, recruit and ultimately victimize young girls, like Plaintiffs, for sexual exploitation.”

The complaint alleges that Ashton met both defendants via Twitter when they were underage high school students. “After performances, Bassnectar would invite these underage girls to his hotel room and demand that the girls shower so that they were ‘clean,’” the complaint says. “He would then have sex with them, requiring the sex to be unprotected, without a condom, and would provide large sums of cash and other items of value in exchange.”

The complaint continues that Ashton required the defendants to keep these relationships secret, that he requested they send him sexually explicit photos and that he controlled their lives including who they were allowed to see and what they could wear, among other allegations.

“These outrageous claims — which were clearly designed for the media, rather than for the courts — are completely without merit, and we eagerly look forward to proving so,” Ashton’s attorney, Mitchell Schuster, says in a statement provided to Billboard.

This lawsuit comes nine months after Ashton announced he was “stepping back” from his career after a wave of sexual misconduct allegations surfaced, many of them via the anonymously run Instagram page @evidenceagainstbassnectar.”

“I am stepping down from my position of power and privilege in this community because I want to take responsibility and accountability,” Ashton said in his July 2020 statement. “I feel intense compassion for anyone I may have hurt. I truly hope you allow me a chance to work together toward healing.” He went to say that the “rumors” are “untrue,” adding that “I realize some of my past actions have caused pain, and I am deeply sorry.”

The complaint continues that when these allegations came to light in the summer of 2020, Ashton reached out to both defendants to tell them he would “always love” them and to offer them money in an effort to keep them from speaking out. Bowling alleges that the head of Interactive Giving Fund also contacted her and pressured her against disclosing any information publicly.

Kent notes that both Ramsbottom and Bowling chose to have their names publicly listed in lieu of using aliases.

“By having the strength and courage to have their names be public,” he says, “they hope other individuals who’ve had similar experiences will have the strength and courage to follow them. Secondly, they want to hold people accountable, and they feel that having their identities out there will help to do so.”