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The rival boss arrives at one of Dubai’s famous high rises in all-white, surrounded by bodyguards. Luar La L, a reggaeton newcomer from Puerto Rico’s northeastern town of Carolina, lends his booming voice to “Swat”, a particularly grimy cut from last year’s Rayo, J. Balvin’s most recent album.
In the video, the duo act out an esoterically shady business deal. Complete with a plot involving a syringe containing a mysterious liquid, SUVs with tinted windows, and oil barrels traded in the expansive sands of the Al Qudra Desert, the video shows the Colombian superstar’s affection for the United Arab Emirates’ largest city. Dubai’s cyberpunk aesthetic shines here, an element of the city that has inspired artists all over the world.
Since the first time the Medellín-born megastar, born José Álvaro Osorio Balvín, set foot in the United Arab Emirates two years ago, he knew he had to return. “They have a system that keeps the city so beautiful,” he muses over Zoom from New York City. “And if this isn’t the safest place on earth, it’s gotta be top three.”
Come November, J. Balvin is the headliner of Romanian festival UNTOLD’s second edition in Dubai. Marking his first performance in the emirate, this is the latest milestone in a long career of bringing his distinctive take on the reggaeton genre, which he unabashedly melded with everything from electronic to rock, to the farthest reaches of the globe.
“Reggaeton is growing at a global level; we’re out here singing in Spanish all over the world,” he says. “It’s an amazing experience, a way to keep expanding. [UNTOLD] is a really cool festival, but more than anything, it’s the fact I’m playing live, which is where I can really feel that connection with the audience. I love festivals because every kind of genre is present. There may be people who have never heard of me before, or have never heard reggaeton in their lives. I love these opportunities to play festivals globally, especially in places like Dubai. I’m excited to give them that energy; I don’t expect them to give it back to me without me giving it to them first.”
Balvin’s Rayo era can be read as something of a grand return—just don’t call it a comeback. The GRAMMY® nominated reggaeton phenom made his name as one of Colombia’s biggest exports to the Caribbean-born genre. Born in Jamaica, and moving through Panamá, New York City, and Puerto Rico, the dembow beat as we know it today (that ever-present tu-tu-tu-tu-tun) eventually landed in Colombia. Bolstered by producers like Nicky Jam and Sky Rompiendo, artists like Karol G and our ICON MENA Sounds cover star became the inheritors of a new generation of El Movimiento. The Colombian mode of reggaeton, with its more pared down radio-friendly beats, left the door wide-open to experimentation; Balvin’s smooth flow and openness to genre mixing before it was a thing made him one of this new wave of Colombian reggaeton’s integral new voices, a wave of acclaim that came out of his debut La Familia, namely Farruko-assisted reggaeton radio mainstay “6 AM”.
From then on, he was the new golden boy of Colombian pop reggaeton and one of the key figures responsible for elevating the genre’s profile worldwide. J. Balvin’s album aesthetic was family-friendly even if the lyrics and his general stage presence weren’t. These were times dominated by flowers with smiley faces (2020’s Colores) and anthropomorphic googly eyes (2018’s Vibras, which saw his first collab with Spanish experimentalist Rosalía before their hit “Con Altura”), far cries from the “Swat” video’s plastic mask-wearing fiend with red contacts mobbing deep in the desert. The awards and multi-platinum RIAA certifications came in droves, including GRAMMY nominations for several singles with fellow reggaeton titan Bad Bunny, as well as a Best Latin or Alternative Album nod for their collaborative work Oasis. Now a regularly chart-topping artist credited for revitalising a genre in the public eye, the man could seemingly do no wrong.
The picture gets murky in 2020, when Balvin drew criticism for his comments on social issues both in Colombia and abroad, prompting several public apologies. That September, the album cycle for his warmly received fifth solo record, José, was overshadowed by a series of public missteps and disputes that lingered into 2022. By the time touring plans were halted due to COVID-19 concerns, the focus had shifted away from the music to the noise surrounding it. In time, however, he began to treat the experience as a lesson—an inflexion point that shaped how he approached his art, his audience, and his public voice moving forward.
“I think, personally, that time was a lesson in being resilient and adapting to difficult changes,” he reflects. “After that point, I had to keep my eyes open to what was going on in the world during the creative process. I became much more careful in the form in which I express myself, in the way that things are said and done. Situations like that teach you to accept change, to value good moments that you took for granted before. I think I became much more grateful, and now I enjoy perfecting every little detail a lot more than I used to.”
Shortly after that unfortunate series of events, and before he took some time away from music, Balvin founded Vibra En Alta. This philanthropic initiative, which includes programs that help underprivileged children complete their education and support teenage mothers, has evolved into a burgeoning effort that continues to this day and for which Balvin remains actively involved. It adds a welcome layer of humanity to one of the world’s biggest stars to know that he has owned his mistakes and doubled down on making a positive change in the world.
Rayo, lovingly named after the first car he ever owned, was billed as a back-to-basics. Largely recorded at London’s Abbey Road studios as Balvin was falling back in love with reggaeton, the album veers between freewheeling genre experiments (collaboration with Regional Mexican act Carín León on “Stoker”) and bouncy radio reggaeton with a more club-heavy slant (“Gato” with Spanish reggaeton’s heir-apparent Bad Gyal). The album garnered him a GRAMMY nomination and got him back on the road for a largely sold-out arena tour across North America. Balvin further capitalised on the buzz with a surprise 10-track project Mixteip, which he dropped this summer.
“Mixteip isn’t an album; it’s a type of playlist of songs that we really like that we made in the studio and wanted to release. It’s a musical project, but it doesn’t have a concept like Rayo does,” says Balvin of the unexpected new collection of songs. “I’d say both of them are different products of the maturity that comes from time, the opportunity to explore other sounds, collaborations with different generations, and returning to music I liked as a kid. All of that is part of the creative process. Making an album takes me a considerably longer amount of time, but I don’t like going too long without giving music to my people, which is where the urge to put out Mixteip comes from. I honestly really just love going to the studio; it’s like going to the movies or a bar or the club. It’s not something tedious to me, but a place where I genuinely enjoy myself.”
Mixteip has several features, including Jay Wheeler, Justin Quiles, and DJ Snake, continuing a proud tradition of J. Balvin welcoming others into his process. This penchant for collaboration has led him far, from Oasis to features with every reggaeton star you can think of and beyond. Balvin’s openness and broad ear eventually led him to North Africa. This year, he has worked with Belgian-Moroccan singer-songwriter Dystinct on scintillating Afrobeats cut “COMO TU”, where the pair trade off verses in Spanish and Darija on a sensual track that boasts the fast-moving bongos of a Dominican bachata interlopation.
“Dystinct is making a really dope kind of Afrobeat straight out of Morocco that’s practically his own version of reggaeton,” says Balvin of the collaboration. “The man has incredible versatility, for sure one of my favourite artists right now. I had heard of him four years ago in Australia, and then we wrote to each other on Instagram and everything just flowed. When we finally met, he was amazing; really about his family. The music he makes is super enriching. We already had the opportunity to sing together in Europe about four months ago, and it was great.”
Aside from working with musicians, J. Balvin has actively kept up with his mental health philanthropist kick and added several other dashes to his multi-hyphenate resumé. With his recent turn appearing in Canadian filmmaker Andy Hines’ Little Lorraine and lending his voice to a major antagonist in anime series Solo Leveling, he’s dipping his toe in the world of film and television.
A Fashion Week regular spotted at Willy Chevarria and Amiri’s Paris Men’s Shows earlier this year, Balvin has collaborated with G-Shock and has designed a number of shoes with Air Jordan 1, making him the first Latino artist to do so. Maybe his most serious venture in that regard is Vita Veloce Team, the multidisciplinary creative studio with Italian designer Mattias Golling he founded last year. The pair have launched a sunglasses line with a design slant called NRGY by Revo. Balvin hasn’t taken his off our entire interview, but to be fair, they’re quite chic.
“It’s really cool because I’m the creative director. It’s not something totally commercial, and I’ve always tasked myself with creating something very different,” he says of his role as a creative director. “It’s my aesthetic, so it’s a universe of colour, which comes through from collaborations I’ve done in the past, all the way to the present day. NRGY is an interesting possibility for me to keep creating my vision in an aesthetic sense. I’m very blessed to have access to these spaces and not just be making music. Creation is creation at the end of the day, no? We all create in different environments; it’s super important to get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself.”
On a specific corner of the diasporic internet, a term has been making the rounds: “the worldwide Latina belt.” Crossing through Latin America and the Caribbean, the imagined belt of who is an honorary Latinx stretches through Japan, East and Southeast Asia, the southern parts of Spain and Italy, and throughout South West Asia and North Africa. This cultural unification theory by way of an Internet meme stretches from Bahrain to Bogotá, and points to everything from the way we eat to the ways we laugh and even to the music our countries have produced.
“I hadn’t thought about it, but without a doubt the music from [the MENA region], the percussion specifically, and the dances… It’s like they have their own form of reggaeton,” says Balvin. “When I was over there and met different artists from the area, there really are a lot of rhythmic similarities that are similar to [South America]. There are even similarities in the moments they prioritise; the way [Arabs] share is very Latino. In Barranquilla, there’s a big Arab community, especially with Lebanese descendants, because the Colombian coast received a lot of Arab merchants. I feel like we’re all definitely united by something at the end of the day.”
The interview was conducted in Spanish, and every quote was translated and condensed for clarity.
Photography: Isaac Anthony
Editor in Chief: Kevin Breen
Stylist: Ian McRae
Stylist Assistant: Ani Hovha
J Balvin Personal Stylist: Romain Regnier
J Balvin Stylist Assistant: Steven Gillman
Producer, ICON MENA: Fatima Mouradd
Producer: Imad Elsheikh
Production Company: Pique
Line Producer: Amna Ali
Photography Assistant: Andrew Beardsworth
Photography Assistant: Anthony Lorelli
Videography: Jix
Production Designer: Elaine Winer
Art Assistant: Christian Mesa
Grooming: Valissa Yoe
Manicurist/Face Sculpture: Juan Alvear
Production Assistant: Bruno Aponte
Talent: J Balvin
Words: E.R. Pulgar
