Jesús Triviño

This isn’t another review of Bad Bunny’s stellar DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, which was released on January 5th. Yes, DtMF is a sociopolitical album. Yes, it’s a love letter to Borinquen. Yes, it’s an homage to the island’s beautiful homegrown genres such as salsa, plena, reggaeton and bomba. Pundits and, more importantly, the people have already heralded this album a classic.

Bruno Mars doesn't walk; he glides. It’s as if he’s perpetually ready to perform a Motown-style choreography set in front of tens of millions watching the Super Bowl (which he has done twice in the past four years)—even easing his way into a suburban L.A. pizza parlor, where moments earlier, his sexy, chart-topping 2012 hit, “Locked Out of Heaven,” was on blast, as if anticipating his appearance. Mars just has that aura. His outfit is straight Fania-era salsa/blaxploitation swag—Gucci cap over his curls; sunglasses; an open shirt, floral and teal; tan shorts; dress shoes (no socks, to accentuate those smooth legs); and minimal gold jewelry.

The term GOAT is tossed around haphazardly in our post-TikTok world. But when you speak of true GOAT status in contemporary music, only a few artists can hold the title and represent it as well as Daddy Yankee. With the release of his final album, LEGENDADDY, the unquestioned GOAT of reggaeton retired. The entire Latinx music community let out a collective “bendito” and prayed to the reggaeton gods for one last perreo. Just 45, Puerto Rico’s Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez está cansado.

Interviewed Colombian reggaeton star Karol G for TIDAL.

It was Victor Cruz's Puerto Rican abuelita who first taught him to dance salsa as a kid in his living room in the gritty neighborhood of Paterson, New Jersey. The record player blasting the sounds of Frankie Ruiz. Many years later, the former Giants wide receiver would pay homage to his grandmother with an end-zone dance that was as much a celebration of his touchdowns as it was of his roots.

Global icon J Balvin highlights the key moments and people that spurred his career to the apex of pop culture. “Of the cowards, nothing has been written,” says the Colombian artist. “You always have to take risks to do something new. Even though change in the beginning is a little painful, in the end you see that the results are excellent.” And Balvin’s results are full of excellence.

Last year, Bad Bunny bested Los Reyes Magos (the Three Wise Men). Gold, frankincense and myrrh combined didn’t stand a chance against the genre-bending opus that was Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio’s debut album, X 100PRE, released on Nochebuena (December 24, 2018). It was a gift made for Latinx but embraced by the world.

It began with a big F-you to authority. “Pigs,” the intro song to Cypress Hill’s emblematic self-titled debut, which celebrates its 30th anniversary on August 13 with a new Expanded Edition, called out the barrio’s overseers. From the get-go you could tell these weren’t your usual Latino MCs rhyming about girls and parties. B-Real, Sen Dog and Latinx-by-association DJ Muggs weren’t about making nice; rather, they were about being heard, smoking bud and stomping out anyone who dare cross them.

Albert Einstein was a genius. He was also a horrible dresser—seemingly always disheveled, wearing oversize sweaters—and that hair. Oh, for the love of Pantene, that hair. In comparison, modern-day genius Lin-Manuel Miranda is the coolest motherfunker on planet Broadway—sporting a Fania-inspired T-shirt (“Todo Tiene Su Final”), his hair slicked back in a colonial pony-tail—not a man-bun, thank God. But Miranda does have one thing in common with Einstein: He looks tired.

Interviewed Brazilian superstar Anitta for TIDAL's In Conversation series.

We were never supposed to hear Tego Calderón as a masterful reggaetonero. Initially a hip-hop MC, the artist from Loíza, Puerto Rico, wasn’t crafting perreos at first. In the early 2000s, Calderón, on the advice of his peers and DJs, started to perform reggaeton his way. “It was very difficult for me to break out doing rap,” he told me in 2003.

If you were of perriando age in the mid-2000s, you were lucky enough to perriar during the Golden Age of Reggaeton. Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” helped globalize the Puerto Rican genre beyond the ’hoods of his beloved island and the extended isle of Ñueva York. Yet, much like its forefathers reggae and hip-hop, reggaeton never addressed the struggles and ambitions of women. In fact, women seemed to go unmentioned — unless, of course, they were the object of lust. Enter Ivy Queen. It’s difficult to

Luis Miguel is truly the model for the modern-day male Latin pop star. Romeo Santos, Prince Royce, Luis Fonsi, Maluma and anyone who’s crooned a romantic quip and been inundated with lingerie onstage is in debt to the original master of romance. This weekend, as LuisMi turns 50 on April 19, we honor his illustrious career and catalogue, which spans four decades.

It’s September 29, 2019, and it’s cloudy inside Madison Square Garden. J Balvin is being showered with applause from a remarkably diverse crowd of reggaeton lovers. In front of the cartoon-like imagery of his Arcoiris stage show and dressed in extra bright colors — per usual — he’s been performing songs from Oasis, his joint album with fellow eccentric trendsetter Bad Bunny.

Diego Armando Maradona wasn’t a perfect man. He wasn’t even the perfect athlete. His diminutive height was better suited for a jockey than a world-class futbolista. However, the scrappy Argentino became one of the beautiful sport’s most beloved players in its history.

Interviewed reggaeton legend Nicky Jam for TIDAL.

Few artists have had the chance to inspire a generation with their music, fashion and overall being — let alone in a mere 23 years. In hip-hop, Tupac Shakur is held on a saintly pedestal by anyone who’s ever picked up a mic, fought the system, or battled with good and evil weighing on their shoulders. Similarly, almost every present-day Latinx (and sometimes non-Latinx) artist gives themselves a bendición in honor of the late Selena Quintanilla.

She's a Snapchat queen today: Demi Lovato’s makeup and eyebrow game is so strong and her lip-syncing so on point (doing Cher’s “Believe,” of course) that she could win RuPaul’s Drag Race without ever touching an elimination stage. She even has a heart-shaped mole! Alas, the whole visual effect is simply created by one of the app’s filters, which Lovato uses to contort her face as crazily as she pleases. “With Snapchat you don’t have to worry about it looking a certain way,” says the unfiltered Lovato, looking snug and comfy in an oversize yellow Moschino sweater and Clark Kent–style glasses at the Malibu home where she just completed her latest Latina cover shoot. “I have so much fun with the filters. I love it.”

Natti Natasha arrives at TIDAL’s New York City offices dressed in a custom emerald green and black Louis Vuitton leather jacket; she’s about to rip the runway at Custo Barcelona, her first show at New York Fashion Week for Spanish designer Custo Dalmau. Still, the Dominican born artist is far more ecstatic to share a few songs from her debut album: the diverse, enchanting ilumiNATTI.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, they say. Especially if the kingdom itself appears to be vanishing. But if you’re Marc Anthony, the undisputed king of salsa, you never give in. You just tilt your crown, recruit your ablest knight (in this case, longtime producer Sergio George) and storm the castle—releasing 3.0, your first album of original salsa music in nine years, undoubtedly the most exciting thing to happen in the genre in a long time. There is trouble in the realm, to be sure. In the first six months of 2013, according to Billboard, Latin music album sales declined to 4.3 million—14 percent lower than during the first half of 2012. But with more than 11 million albums sold worldwide in his career, we wouldn’t bet against Anthony’s ability to pump up those numbers considerably.