In a relatively short amount of time, J Balvin has become an unabashed superstar - the kind of artist that icons like JAY-Z spend their time listening to. In this FRONTPAGE story, Balvin pulls back the curtain on the life of a pop star.
The first time J Balvin experienced reggaetón he was sitting at a gas station outside his hometown of Medellín, Colombia. In the well-honored tradition of teenagers across the world, the artist born José Álvaro Osorio Balvín was loitering. “We used to go to the gas station, put the car outside and just play music. One of my friends came with a CD and he said, ‘Check this out.’ And it was Daddy Yankee. I'm like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’” The emotional connection was instant. Suddenly, he knew two things: One, reggaetón was going to get bigger, and two, he would spend the rest of his life pursuing that sound.
Reggaetón, a type of dancehall music, is an enveloping mix of hip/hop, Caribbean beats with both Latin American and Jamaican influences. Within that broader category is the reggaetón that J Balvin helped create, a new wave of the sound with smooth production, a high shine, EDM adjacent backing, and clear trap influences. It’s at the club when you go out, it’s blasting from your Uber radio, it’s going viral behind choreographed dance challenges on TikTok. It’s what many think of when they think of Karol G or Rauw Alejandro or former Highsnobiety cover star Bad Bunny. And it’s J Balvin who sits before me.
In person, or over Zoom, rather, Balvin is laid-back but collected. Reclining on a couch he holds his camera at a low angle. Through one eyebrow is a double razer slash, giving him a perpetually mischievous look. His signature buzzed head is dyed a vivid turquoise. As we speak, he runs his hands over that half inch of hair constantly and asks twice how to pronounce my name, to make sure he’s got it. Throughout the conversation, he casually throws out music exec lingo. We’re talking on the heels of a world tour that marked his return to stardom after the birth of his son with Argentine model Valentina Ferrer. He’s reflecting on the tour, and what he does best, which is to get his audience to vibe to his music. Vibes are important to Balvin. Another important thing to know about J Balvin: he’s never recorded an album in English.
“I want to do this music in Spanish,” he says. He wants people to sing even if they don't know the words. Even if “they're going to just mumble or whatever, but they're going to vibe to it.” The idea of an artist knowing you don’t know the words to his music and saying, “Fuck it, just vibe,” feels radical. And, so far, that's how it's been. “Of course, there were going to be some Latinos around, we are everywhere, right? But basically, these shows were 95% domestic, from the country we were doing. It was mind-blowing.”
In the mega-hit “Mi Gente” he sings “Mi música no discrimina a nadie – Toda mi gente se mueve.” In English: “My music doesn’t discriminate – all my people move.” Today, J Balvin is arguably reggaetón’s biggest star. Over his career, the charismatic 38-year-old has had plenty of firsts. With six Latin Grammys under his belt and even more nominations, Balvin is the first reggaetón artist to play mainstage at Coachella. He’s collaborated in every way with every type of recording (and visual) artist imaginable: Skrillex, Cardi B, Bad Bunny, Pitbull, Pharrell, Major Lazer, Dua Lipa, Takashi Murakami, Daddy Yankee (his adolescent idol), and Beyoncé. He’s regularly spotted palling around with Jay-Z. (Balvin, managed by Roc Nation, performed at the rapper's birthday party. You never stop to think about who Jay-Z's entertainment is, do you?) Balvin’s the first Latino to ever design a line of Jordans. And after breaking that barrier, in what I’d come to find was a signature move of J Balvin, he did it again, and again. His third Jordan has a yellow to red gradient under the heel, inspired by the Medellín sunset. Recently, the Latin American Fashion Awards announced they were planning to honor Balvin as Latin Fashion Icon of the Year. In preparation for this interview I scrolled through headlines about the superstar and it felt like he’s climbed so high they haven’t finished building the staircase yet.
After the world tour, back in New York, where he lives with his girlfriend and son, Balvin is set on embracing a slow way of life. He loves taking his kid to the park, “living in the moment,” and going to the gym early every morning. Balvin doesn’t really drink, he only started two years ago and even now he limits it to once a week. He makes sure to stay up on what the new reggaetón sounds are, what the kids are doing. Balvin has the moderate media diet of a hip young dad, except of course he’s a global superstar and fashion icon (watch his Architectural Digest home tour in Colombia for a beautiful study in clean lines).
To Balvin, fashion is as important as music. He credits his mom’s good taste with inspiring him, “I think at some point, you got to let the kids know that you don't have to buy expensive things, if you can't afford it, to look cool. It's all about how you feel. I can go to Chinatown, pull off anything I want. I'm going to make it look cool. That's the same thing with kids. It's like, don't pressure yourself, you don't have to buy these expensive high fashion brands to make sure that you're cool. You're cool enough being cool, right?”
As for his day-to-day style philosophy, Balvin embraces the emotive pleasure of getting dressed. Some days he feels like a cowboy, the next a rockstar. “I don't have [a] certain aesthetic. To me, it's like making music. One day you want to make party music or a party song; we want to do a beach song, want to do a sad song. How do I want to express myself? It's not how am I going to impress. No. It's how I want to feel and what I want to tell without saying anything.” While this highbrow/lowbrow approach might seem like a surprising message from a man who’s led Guess campaigns, this idiosyncrasy is an extension of how Balvin views himself and his position in culture. To be cool is to be authentic. For Balvin, if you know yourself, and stay true to your guiding principles, you’ll make something others can connect to. Fashion and music are ways of connecting to people through vibe.
Vibes. It’s a theme. I asked him what he was watching lately, and Balvin explained proudly that he exclusively watches alien and exorcism documentaries. He falls asleep to them, and he sleeps “like a baby. My energy is so protected that I don't allow any of that energy to touch me, I just have fun with it. I watch exorcisms just to go to sleep. I have good intentions in my heart, good intentions. And knowing that I'm the only one to decide if any energy can touch me or not. It's like a radio frequency. There's AM and there's FM, so if the vibration’s on the AM, I just switch it to FM, and that's my vibration, you cannot vibe with me.”
So, what’s on J Balvin FM? Emotionally, being with his family. Intellectually, expansion and the continued quest for moguldom. And musically? The song “Dientes,” a recent hit collaboration with Usher and DJ Khaleed (In the video, Usher shows up on the cover of Vibe magazine). Coming up next year on J Balvin radio is a new album with Ed Sheeran. I asked him what the album sounded like, point blank. I was having a hard time mentally rendering the two artists in the studio together, despite them having collaborated before, but Balvin demurred, “We have at least fifteen songs for you to listen to.”
Beyond being a star in his own right, Balvin is a consistent collaborator. He’s worked with everyone from Beyoncé to the creators of Spongebob (Balvin penned the song Agua for the recent animated movie Sponge on the Run). While constant collaboration might seem exhausting, Balvin is passionate about it. “I love to collaborate because it opens my mind,” he says. Balvin talks glowingly about Sheeran, “I was learning a lot from him. A lot. I guess he learned a lot from me too because we come from different worlds. But we're from the same world, let's say, musically. Out of this album came a brotherhood. As long as I stay true to what I like, and not what is selling.” His success is some proprietary blend of complete confidence, unyielding grind, and inborn ease in the universe.
Despite having in previous interviews referred to J Balvin as a persona, he’s quick to strike that from the record. J Balvin is a persona he created, one tethered to his true identity. Balvin is true to the name he gave himself years ago when he was first coming on the Colombian scene: “El Negocio,” aka the business. Essentially, like any mogul, “Balvin” exists as both the artist and the executive, the product and the marketer.
I wondered if it was hard for him to stay true to J Balvin while constantly collaborating, but no, it’s the inverse: being J Balvin is about collaboration. Direct collaborations with other artists, spiritual collaborations with global sounds, and sartorial collaborations like pairing designer pieces with things he just likes. Balvin’s genius is in knowing how to connect things to create something new, fresh, cool, real.
Keeping it real is a theme for Balvin.“I think that's the key, to be surrounded by real people. It gives me peace knowing that I can be anywhere, and that I don’t have to be acting or pretending that I'm someone else. It's just me. I'm not saying that I'm humble, I'm just saying that I want to keep it real.” Throughout the interview Balvin’s entourage casually mills around behind him. Balvin is momentarily solemn, “In this team, everybody's family. Doesn't matter what part you work in, we’re all the same, and everybody has the same rights to say what they feel about me, and vice versa.”
It’s hard though, imagining anyone seriously impacting Balvin’s vibrations.
With an earnest hand to his heart Balvin ends the call, “Bye, queen.”
