On August 9th, J Balvin released Raya ninth studio album that also marked his return to the urban scene in style and accompanied by names such as Bad Gyal, FeidBlessd, Saiko and more; artists who, in these three years of absence, picked up the baton of reggaeton and Latin music to continue raising it to the top.
On the occasion of this album and his return to the stage, The Colombian sat in front of the microphones of WECB Colombia to tell Roberto Cardona all the secrets about his recent work and review his origins and talk about the present of the genre.
His father's gift, the driving force behind his music career
“Rayo was the car my father bought me. We came from a lower-middle class background and my father went bankrupt… And one of the reasons I got into music was because I wanted to help my dad get out of bankruptcy. He was a manager at a company and then for pharmaceutical laboratories… and there was a time when he lost his job and was out of work for two years (…) The only words I heard were overdraft (we were in the red) all the time. Despite everything, the old man told me: 'Here is your car, drive it, go to school…', but he wasn't making any money with that,” he confessed.
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So what he did was pick up his classmates at home, who normally went by bus, take them to school (and bring them back) for “50 lucas (Colombian pesos) a month.” In total, about six people in the car: “With that I paid for the gas and, with what I had left, I went to schools to sing, to the neighborhoods… That's where I sold CDs and clothes. I always sold clothes.”
“Rayo saw a very important stage in Colombian urban music, because many artists came on board; artists who are here today, others are not, but they are part of the history of what is today Colombian reggaeton,” he said.
His first concert as 'J Balvin, man'
“I was scared, just like when I go to sing in any stadium; that here (in my heart), doesn't change. But the people who went to listen to me were only my friends, who told other friends, my mom, my dad and that's it. I won't forget that the manager of the nightclub came to scold us in the dressing room because we were making noise. Can you understand the processes I had to go through, being reprimanded for making noise in a nightclub?”
“In my first seven years of career I didn't have a manager; it was me and the promoter… I passed myself off as Jose. I negotiated from my number, I played hard to get,” he said, and he consulted Pope, his right-hand man, with whom he learned a great lesson: “One of the greatest blessings in life is to say no and One wins many times in life by saying no. Many times, we didn't have a penny and we said no. Our vision was to create an industry where artists were valued and paid what they deserved at that time… because we never sang covers. We were broke and it was very difficult to say no, but we did it, and then a month later they would call again, offering more, and then we could say yes.”
You win many times in life by saying no.
— J Balvin
That night he won a million pesos, an amount he had never seen together. However, he had to pay the venue 800,000 for damage caused by the dancers during the show. Finally, he divided the remaining 200,000 in half among the dance corps, keeping 100,000 for himself, money with which he bought a new “cell phone.”
His connection with Will Smith
His Coachella performance in April featured Will Smith as a surprise guest. A production that took a whole year to develop, with an alien theme, could not have had anyone other than the star of Men in Black on stage.
“We needed a guest who was not predictable, but who made perfect sense (with the staging) and Will (apart from being the ideal candidate), had not appeared for three years after the Oscars. I identify with him because we both went through a difficult time, where I know from his personality and mine, we suffered and We went through a dark time, but with that hunger to return and say: 'don't forget, we will remind you how things are done, Not because I am the best, but because of my abilities and what I have achieved and what I will continue to achieve with God's favor,” he revealed.
One mistake cannot erase a person's greatness.
— J Balvin
He said that “when I explained it to him as it was, he told me that he would think about it and the timing It was perfect. That moment gave him a lot of confidence in knowing that he was still Will Smith. One mistake can't erase the greatness of a person. I felt so identified with him because of what we had been through, what we were going to do and for showing that we were going to do it well.” And the result was very satisfying: he felt like a little kid.
If you want to discover everything that J Balvin told Roberto Cardona in 40 Cups for WECB Colombia, PRESS PLAY!
