The story behind Lex Borrrero, one of the Latin music moguls

(CNN Spanish) -

Perhaps the name of Lex Borrero is not familiar to fans of Latin music.

Together with legendary producer Tainy they formed the talent incubator known as NEON 16 2 years ago.

Artists such as J Balvin, Bad Bunny, Selena Gómez or Kali Uchis have passed through its ranks.

And he is also the person behind the hit "Agua" by Balvin and the 

soundtrack

of the film "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the run".

In just over 24 months of its founding, NEON 16 was named by Fast Company magazine as the most innovative music company of the year.

It seems like a very short time for success.

How did Lex Borrero get into the music business?

Colombian Lex Borrero didn't want to be in the music business, he originally wanted to be an architect.

His break came when he graduated from high school.

advertising

"I was not a child who grew up wanting to be in the music business. I really always wanted to be an architect. I love creating things. But as happens to all of us in life, life moved me some things and I got into the music business and was at a point where I had just graduated from high school, "recalls Borrero.

"I had finished my first days, my first taste of what the music industry was after signing a boy here from Miami, and I said 'ok. What do I do with my life? to be an architect? Or do I jump to trying to see what this thing called the music business is? "says Borrero.

He came to production by a stroke of luck.

Lex Borrero says it was thanks to an ad he saw in Scratch Magazine, a publication of the hip hop magazine Double XL.

"I went, called, sent my productions to the company with a CD that one had to send in the mail because we are not in the age of the internet as we are now. And at that point I decided that I was going to New York to try be part of this competition, "says Borrero.

The producer says that after being rejected in the competition, he managed to enter thanks to one of the participants not showing up.

The result?

He won the competition.

The golden opportunity

After winning the competition, Borrero returned to Miami where he worked in an Expedia company call center while making trips to New York to complete an internship he found in a production studio.

What he didn't know was that he would end up living on the train platforms and sleeping on the city streets.

"In that process my money ran out and I ended up sleeping on the streets of New York, getting up urinated, I got up with my shirt all wet. I had to bathe in regular baths, not showers, but baths, with a glass and take a dip. After a year of having a hard time, sleeping in basements, in all kinds of things, in churches, the week I decided to return to Miami, that week I had an opportunity to sell my first production and have my first I work in the music industry, "he says.

From sleeping on the train to producing the

SpongeBob

soundtrack 

with Tainy 

After working as an executive at Roc Nation Records, Borrero met Tainy and on a trip to Tokyo they decided to found the talent incubator NEON 16.

"We got the name there, from there we bought the studio and started working little by little. And it's funny, because the first project we worked on from the new studio, which at that time was not even built, was a house, some rooms, some

speakers

, it was Kali Uchis ", he says.

It is about the album "Without fear (of love and other demons)", from which "Telepathy" emerges, a song that went viral on social networks and climbed positions on Spotify and the Billboard charts.

The opportunity to produce the SpongeBob soundtrack came just days before the coronavirus pandemic broke out in 2020.

"He had just arrived in Mexico for the Spotify Awards and I told Tainy, 'I think we should do the whole project, I think there is a lot we can give him,'" he recalls.

As a result of this, the hit "Agua" by J Balvin and Tainy was born, a song that has accumulated more than 674 million views on YouTube.

"Being able to have a song like

Agua

in such a dull summer (due to covid-19 ... it was) a song that brought happiness to the children. To all the families. I sometimes went out to buy something in the market and saw to people with

water

in the car and I said that's what it is, those are the things that make me very happy, "says Borrero.

NTERTAIN, Lex Borrero's new project with Tommy Mottola

If this success were not enough, in early 2021, NEON 16 announced that they teamed up with Latin music mogul Tommy Mottola and Range Media to create NTERTAIN, a company focused on Latin talent in different fields. .

An original idea that emerged almost 9 years ago, is resurrected together with Iván Rodríguez, creative director of NEON 16 and in which Motolla is incorporated.

"Together during the quarantine we resurrected the NTERTAIN name and joined a company called Range Media Partners, which is a company that we had also helped to found during the quarantine and is a powerhouse in Hollywood. Together we started NTERTAIN which is now going to to be a producer, a developer, a

streaming

company for

Latin content, far beyond what has been seen, "says Lex Borrero.

Among NTERTAIN's first projects is the Montaner family original series, which will feature the entire family of musicians, from Ricardo Montaner and wife Marlene Rodríguez to their children: Evaluna and her husband Camilo Echeverry;

Ricky and Mau and their partners, Stefi Roitman and Sara Escobar.

The issue date of this series is still unknown.