J Balvin Is a Man With a Mission: Making Reggaeton Global

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/arts/music/j-balvin-energia-interview.html

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The first song on “Energía,” the new album by J Balvin, one of the biggest reggaeton stars in the world, has almost nothing to do with that specific brand of Latin hip-hop, known for its speed and “boom-pa-dum-pa” beat.

Instead, the song, “Veneno,” has skittering drums and a muted, eerie instrumental, à la Drake, with J Balvin approximating a melodic flow that could have come from Atlanta. The lyrics refer to Rihanna, Michael Jordan and “Scarface.” For an American rap fan, the only thing foreign about the track is that, like the other songs on the album, it’s entirely in Spanish.

For now, this is J Balvin’s version of crossing over — synthesizing the sound, feel and delivery of modern American rap and R&B before bringing it all back to his own cultural turf. Everyone is invited, though concessions to pop hegemony are relatively minimal.

It’s all by design. J Balvin, born José Álvaro Osorio Balvín, a native of Medellín, Colombia, is a global superstar — with 11 million Instagram followers and almost three billion plays on YouTube — but to conquer the United States, he is deliberately trying to pull pop’s center toward him. That includes rewriting the rules of what it means to be a Latin music celebrity in a time of smartphones and social media.

“I’m not in a hurry,” he said last week, laid-back in a Saint Laurent jeans jacket with zebra stripes and a pink leopard-print collar, while on a trip to New York to promote his second major album.

By flirting with the American music industry — including a domestic audience of some 55 million Latinos — but not straying too far from his reggaeton roots, he hopes to attract interest without undermining his global brand.

Citing his predecessors in this careful dance, like Ricky Martin and Shakira, J Balvin said: “They didn’t live what I’m living right now. They felt that they needed to cross over to get bigger, but I’m going to go the furthest I can in Spanish. And then we’ll see.”

Still, his ambitions are apparent.

“Energía,” which was released worldwide on June 24, features contributions from Pharrell Williams and Poo Bear, the songwriter known for his work with Justin Bieber. (J Balvin’s most prominent introduction to American audiences came last year on the official “Latino remix” of Mr. Bieber’s reggaeton-esque hit, “Sorry.” Recalling the direct request from Mr. Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, J Balvin said, “I was literally jumping.”)

“I want to make history bringing these guys to my world,” J Balvin said of his American collaborators. On “Safari,” his next single, Pharrell sings the hook in Spanish; Grant Singer, known for his work with the Weeknd and Skrillex, directed the forthcoming video.

“The world is getting smaller and smaller because of this thing right here,” J Balvin said, tapping an iPhone for emphasis. “Ginza,” an earlier single that spent 22 straight weeks atop Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, has more than 575 million YouTube plays and found an audience in Greece, Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria.

“They’re playing our music on the radio in France,” J Balvin said. “I’m not talking about the streets — I’m talking about the charts.”

“It’s weird for Spanish music to get there,” he added.

J Balvin was something of an outsider, even in reggaeton. The style was born in Panama in the early ’90s as a mix of Jamaican dance-hall reggae and rap, but truly exploded out of Puerto Rico, peaking around 2005 after the release of Daddy Yankee’s “Barrio Fino,” which would go on to become the best-selling Latin album of the decade.

J Balvin, who grew up on Metallica and Nirvana, had his paradigm shifted by Daddy Yankee, whom he calls the Jay Z of Latin hip-hop. As a teenager, “I was such a fan that I was copying his style, the way he moved onstage, his flows, his raps,” J Balvin said.

But he was late to the reggaeton party, far from its geographical center and did not fit the mold as a street rapper, having come from a solid middle-class family. Ultimately, though, those contradictions would serve him well.

“His approach to the music was completely different,” said Jesús Lopez, the chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Latin America and Iberian Peninsula, which oversees J Balvin’s label, Capitol Latin.

Mr. Lopez, who was involved in the first reggaeton explosion, said that he thought “the market was saturated and repetitive.” But J Balvin’s revamp of the style was the “correct evolution” — more melodic and pop-oriented, with “more respect to the ladies,” Mr. Lopez said.

J Balvin, a savvy marketer in his own right, has his elevator pitch down: “I see myself like what Drake did in the game,” he explained. “I came with melodies and different lyrics, from a different place — reggaeton is from Puerto Rico, Drake is from Canada.”

“That’s the best way to tell the story to America,” he said.

It was a trip to the United States as a teenager that first opened his eyes to the full possibilities of pop stardom.

After a disappointing high school student exchange program took him to Oklahoma — “I was expecting the U.S. that everyone knows from Hollywood” — J Balvin, then 19, set off for New York, where he encountered the full influence of moguls like Jay Z, 50 Cent and P. Diddy for the first time.

“I knew the music, but I didn’t know how powerful it could be when you take music to another level with the culture of marketing,” he said, recalling the billboards in Times Square.

He spent the next few years bouncing between Medellín, Miami and New York, trying to make his music career happen, working illegally in the United States as a roofer and a house painter to support himself. (Last year, J Balvin pulled out of a performance at the Miss U.S.A. pageant after Donald J. Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants.)

While failing to find traction here, J Balvin said he received some sage advice: “Go back to your country, start from scratch, make your name and let your people take you to another level.”

The grass-roots campaign in Colombia — including constantly recording, knocking on radio station doors and performing at small clubs — worked, thanks in no small part to his mastery of social media, where his excitable but exceedingly humble personality shines. J Balvin said he specifically targeted local trendsetters (actors, athletes, models) in an effort to make reggaeton cool in his home country.

Now he is trying to achieve that success on a global level, upending expectations along the way.

“I want to change the perception about Latinos worldwide,” J Balvin said. “I think people don’t know yet how cool we are. When you see a movie, they always put the Latino on the bad side or in a tacky way. It’s not like that. Latinos are shining like a diamond.”

“Kanye and Pharrell are in fashion,” he added, hinting at further brand expansion. “Why not J Balvin?”