Last March, Puerto Rican singer Alex Rose launched an EP titled Sexflix. Rose has raised inaccessible melodies of the good fortune of R&B as “Let me love you” through Mario and “One Wish” through Ray J, but made two key revisions to his source team, updating the drums to compete with fashion recordings and adding his own Spanish words. His amalgama has arrived at the house: the “giving you” single has accumulated more than 30 million perspectives on YouTube, and emerging stars such as Bryers and Magic Casper stacked Remix.

Rose is not the only Latin artist who adopts this approach.   In October, the still adaptable pit bull joined the bachata singer, Prince Royce, Usher and “lovers and friends” of Lil Jon in “I want to know. ” A week later, the Spanish singer Rosalía, who arrived here by making a flamenco song, launched “Baghdad”, which revitalized the harvest in the center without the blood of Justin Timberlake “Cry a River. “

It is not a coincidence that all these songs are published an era of 8 months. “The influence of R&B in Latin music is strengthening every day,” said Jorge Fonseca, a Sony Latin A & R that played a role in the emergence of the Latin trap. “This is the new sound, that’s where [Latin music] is going. “

There is a long history of Latin participation in R&B, especially in the United States. “There was a type of kinship [among those communities],” explains Ruben Molina, Chicano Soul writer: Recordings and History of A American Culture. “Think of a position like San Antonio: it was the last prevented for the Chitlin circuit [a club formula where black artists were allowed to play the time of segregation], in which Soul singers, Blues singers trusted. Many times the public was necessarily a chicana audience. “

Molina continues: “In Los Angeles, many Chicano teams had very intelligent Klaxon sections: they studied at school, they read music, they knew how to gather a song, and they have become the teams in some of the main radio stations here. At that time, many singers who brought were black artists. There was a camaraderie. “

A giant component of the soul of Chicano Molina likes, pretty, without hurry, with strong connections with Doo -Wop, it was sung in English. But the Spanish versions of Popular Songs of R&B have emerged in Mexico and other countries in the southern United States. “Many creditors go through Central America and unearthed records of soul equipment in Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala,” Molina said.

But the variants of the Spanish language of R&B did not capture giant pieces of the Latin public. “We have never had R&B artists [in Spanish] who have been successful,” explains Rebeca León, who manages J Balvin and Rosalia. “If you wanted to sing and succeed in the upper point in Latin America, you had to automatically make popular,” adds Jesse Báez, an artist who grew up in Guatemala and now sings R&B in Spanish frequently. “And not a great pop, on the side of the horn. “

During the beyond the particular 15 years, Reggaeton has been the dominant form of advertising music in Spanish. “Reggaeton was more directed,” said Angelo Torres, who runs A&R for Marc Anthony’s label, Magnus Media. “Or if the artists sang, they made a song of Latin consonance [instead of taking the inflections of R&B]. ” Then, about five years ago, when Báez questioned the pop landscape, he remembers regretting: “No one does R&B in Spanish. “

But that has changed, largely thanks to the emergence of the Latin trap. While Bad Bunny, Ozuna and others have acquired a global audience, had two vital effects. First, those assisted tracks loosen the reggaeton storishold in the dominant Latin current. “He opened an area for those young people who pay attention to another music,” Torres said. “Now this is what you grew up: if you grew up paying attention to Trey Songz and The Weeknd, it is much more acceptable. ” Báez attributes to the Spanish politics “tell her friends” of The Weeknd to help him download a registration contract.

In addition, the Latin trap has approached Spanish pop and English pop. “The sounds, the progress of the agreements in the trap are naturally more American,” explains Fonseca. This caused the exchange between the two musical cultures to even more friction.

Torres de Magnus Media began to hear more R&B in Spanish in a while after Trac began to win apartment in Puerto Rico. “This is where artists do that: Rauw Alejandro, Lyanno, Sousa lead this rate in the Puerto Rican space,” Torres explains. “This feels in Latin America,” he adds, thanks to an almost exponential expansion in Latin listening in recent years. “Now there are more ears in music, more eyes in the videos. ” In 2018, Spotify created a new reading list entitled “R&B in Spanish”.

Last year, the success of R&B in the Spanish language last year the “all” remix through Alex Rose with Cazzu, Lenny Tavárez, Lyanno and Rauw Alejandro, a type of R&B counterpart of the “you boté”. The prudent doses of Melisma in the first verse of Rose, the intelligent organized support voice in the Tavárez hook, the sky of Alejandro Cry, we will escape before passing the stick to Cazzu, these are all the classic features of R&B. In January, the remix “all” approached the one billion perspectives on YouTube.

Other songs in this vein have repercussions on the Spanish -speaking global and, above all, they aroused the interest of record companies. Magnus signed Yashua, a young Dominican-American singer; His single “sorrow” of 2018 is complete of falsete falsete de falsete and vocal tremors, and his dance movements pay tribute to Michael Jackson through Ne-I. In the other aspect of the Atlantic, the universal music of Spain has put its weight to Maikel Delalle. In songs such as “Condionnees” and “Latin American”, Delacalle is based on the undeniable guitar blows that supported countless Singles of R&B in the last 90s and early 2000s. While “Latin American” touches its end, the singer begins to multiply his voice, adding vocal races that open and submerge the R&B brand.  

Fonseca has a good theory that aligns the R&B in Spanish with past traditions in the dominant Latin current. “For a long time, the ballads led the market,” he said, until reggaeton took over, the alteration of the ballads. Now he thinks that “the new urban Latin phase can return to this romanticism for a new generation, the last link between sentimental words and music. It is a herbal transition of what the trap may not do completely. “

This last step can take time, however, artists already feel a quarter of the work. “The total Latin market is used for customer music, and it is difficult to make other people pay attention and pay attention to new sounds,” explains C. Tangana, a Spanish artist who co -written 8 songs in the new Rosalía album, adding “Baghdad”, and has produced music for Báez. “But it works: we have figures. “

“You can make a reading list [of this music] in Spotify, and there are at least 25 songs that have been released in the more than 4 months that are relevant,” adds Báez. “I don’t think it was imaginable 3 years ago. ” 

The limits of the imaginable are replaced very temporarily in fashion pop. In May 2018, one of Fonseca’s colleagues in Sony Latin attracted a new video to his attention. “Immediately, I was excited,” explains the A&R. “I had an assembly with my boss, I showed him and said:” I left here. “I didn’t even think twice. That same night, I called the number that was on the YouTube page. ” Five days later, a plane jumped through Chile.

The video in the “not stable” consultation through a singer named Paloma Mami. Born in New York and raised in Chile, the 19 -year -old singer had never recorded professionals before publishing this song, a single slender, in a transparent way. Around the two -minute brand, when Paloma Mami passes in English and translates into a reprimand of Mélismatic opposite to – “He made me moment between you and me, he is attached / I realize very temporarily / who I am. ” You know that she studied Aaliyah and TLC in a nearby collaboration.

The speed of Fonseca’s departure worked for its advantage. While he in Chile, Paloma Mami began to obtain “emails and SMS of Republic, Warner, Universal,” he recalls. “I like it, I’m sorry, I’m here!” The singer joined the Sony Latin list in a month, which Fonseca calls “one of the fastest firms I have made. ” And when “not stable” hit Spotify, he had remains in the Global 50 of Spotify.

What caught Fonseca when he met the single from Paloma Mami for the first time? He says: “I saw the future. “