Eladio Carrión wears Dolce&Gabbana.Adrián Cuerdo
“Yesterday I went to Kanye's concert. He is my favorite artist, the biggest inspiration for my music. I barely recorded three videos and I didn't even look at the
cell phone
when I did it,” says Eladio Carrión (Kansas, 29 years old) in a luxurious hotel room in Madrid, fresh from Paris Fashion Week. He dresses according to the urban music star that he is: helmets half placed on his head, a loose black leather jacket from Off-White, an
oversized
sweatshirt , jeans, black clogs and, of course, his enormous diamond watch on his wrist. left wrist. With a corpulent build – he was a professional swimmer representing Puerto Rico –, deep voice, large hands, tattoos and a outlined beard, he is impressive. But he relaxes as soon as he sits in a velvet armchair next to the enormous bed where he rests, in silence and with an extra tape recorder, his press equipment.
The use of cell phones at concerts is something that obsesses him: “I understand that there are people who want to have their memories, but if it were up to me I would have the phone removed for the entire concert,” he says. “We are glued to the cell phone. There are people who watch entire concerts through it. It is incredible and the energy that is transmitted to the artist is different. We live too much in the networks. We want
to post
everything we went through instead of living the experience.”
More information
Eladio Carrión: “I prefer to stay watching Netflix with my dog than to be in a nightclub”
Recently a video of one of his live shows in Costa Rica went viral in which he asked his fans not to record while his song
Mbappe
was playing . It was such an unusual request that he remembers it as almost countercultural. “They were like they were in Woodstock [laughs]. “No phone, everyone jumping and jumping like crazy.” During May and June he will be on tour in 11 Spanish cities and another six European cities. He has already announced several sold-out concerts. Among them, at the time of writing this article, two in a row at the WiZink Center in Madrid (and a third with 80% of the tickets already sold) and another at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona. Will you ask them to turn off cell phones? “
Clear
, brother,” he exclaims. “It's the first time I've toured here. “I was really looking forward to it.”
King Eladio? The Puerto Rican musician wears a Louis Vuitton coatAdrián Cuerdo
Until now Carrión had only performed in Spain at festivals, but that, he says, is not even close: “A 40-minute live show has nothing to do with one that lasts almost two hours. Spain deserves a
little show
from me. We are going to experience Italy and Switzerland, but here they have been active with me for a long time and they deserve it. There is nothing better than being at a
show
. Today you can buy
views
, but you can't buy the emotions that people feel with your music. "Sometimes I love that my fans know all my songs verse by verse."
21.6 million people listen to Eladio Carrión on Spotify per month and his music accumulates more than five billion views across different digital platforms. With
TQMQA
(acronym for
I love you more than yesterday
), the first single from her new album,
Sol María
, achieved number 1 in the United States for the first time: that of
Billboard
's Latin Pop Airplay . He does reggaeton, rap,
dembow
and even
R'N'B
or
Jersey club
, but mostly
trap
. In fact, there are those who consider him the greatest reference of
trap
in Spanish. Among them a voice as authoritative as his compatriot Bad Bunny. “I got out of
trap
a while ago . I left it to Eladio,” sang the great world star of the moment last year in
MONACO
, the first single from his latest album.
“Reggaeton is bastard, it is very hard to transmit happiness and reach the radio, but it doesn't give me the opportunity to express myself well”
They met at the right time. Carrión was an
influencer
who had signed with what was then a small local company, Rimas. Confused about his future, he decided to enroll in the College of Cinematography, Arts and Television of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Apparently, when he walked through the door, Bad Bunny came out, then only Benito, and they became friends. Carrión, who boasts of having “a bastard's ear” for hits, heard the original version of the now legendary
Diles
and was the one who told Noah Assad, boss of Rimas, about that little kid. The rest is history.
Today, Eladio Carrión
finds the
urban music
label too broad. He prefers to talk about
trap
and hip hop. “It makes it easier for me to tell my story. It's the
challenge
I like: putting ten
punchlines
in eight
bars
, floating in a rhythm, offering references that people understand...". And he counters: “Reggaeton is bastard, it is very hard to transmit happiness and reach the radio, but it doesn't give me the opportunity to express myself well. It's more like a game of searching for that repetitive chorus, that melody." Of course, it is also
challenging
for him to do it and have it be liked worldwide. If Carrión stands out for something, it is for his versatility: it can be just as melodic as dance music, but he knows how to complement it with the narrative will of rap lyrics. The themes range from self-improvement, redemption, romantic and sexual. But he cleverly circumvents the genre's clichés.
His music career began in 2015. It was his third reboot. She had previously been a figure of humor on the Internet. He became a comedian when in 2013 he discovered that being a professional swimmer and competing against Michael Phelps representing Puerto Rico was not enough to live on.
As a comedian he gained fame by imitating other artists such as Arcángel, Ñejo or Cosculluela, with whom he ended up collaborating. When he started to be known for that, he left it and bet everything on music. He now abhors social networks, but as a comedian he gained fame through Instagram or the now defunct Vine. “That's why I got off Vine. At first I liked it because it was something simple, recorded like that with my finger at the moment [makes a gesture of taking a selfie]. Then it required much more time. I don't have three hours to edit a video that lasts seconds,” he responds. “Brother, I feel like it started out as a good exposure tool, but it turned into something more evil. "There are many bad people on networks, who use it for things that are not." But although he criticizes them, he recognizes: “The day my children take their first steps I know I'm going to run for the
cell phone
, instead of enjoying the experience so much directly with my eyes. There have been many years of brainwashing like this. But those are other topics,” he says between laughs.
Carrión taking the kickoff in a Puerto Rico-Nicaragua baseball game held in Miami in 2023Rob Tringali (MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Eladio Carrión at the 2021 Latin Grammy Awards with Sofía ReyesChris Pizzello (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
Carrión with the singer MoradInstagram @eladiocarrion
The trapper poses in the session with BizarrapInstagram @eladiocarrion
The singer kisses his puppy KaliInstagram @eladiocarrion
Eladio poses as a colleague with the American rapper 50 CentInstagram @eladiocarrion
Because the multi-platinum artist is in a new life stage. He just became the father of twins; They were born last November, just when, after several years of nominations, Carrión finally won the Latin Grammy for best hip hop song for
Coco Chanel
, along with Bad Bunny. He couldn't pick it up. The birth took place on the day of the gala, which was held in Seville. The die is cast with his sixth album,
Sol María
, released earlier this year and named after his mother.
Mama's Boy
, the last song on the album—which she performs with Spanish rapper Nach—is dedicated to her. “I have a giant heart and it is because of how you have raised me,” sings Carrión. “It's an album for her. “She wanted to thank him through music,” she says now. The album and his new family have made him reflect “about when they told me: 'You'll never understand this until you're a dad.' Well I understood. I am having a super nice experience with my children, it is something inexplicable,” she responds with a smile from ear to ear. This sixth album is confirmation of it. In it there are consolidated talents of Latin American music such as Arcángel, De La Ghetto, Yandel or Duki. But he also encourages the most emerging ones, such as the teenager Milo J. With the young Argentine in
La Canción Feliz Del Disco
he appears happy, immune to possible criticism and, above all, calm. “Today I feel blessed and lucky,” he declares.
“One has to value what one is singing, because as an influence it is a lot. Especially, if they are young children who are glued to YouTube, they are at the age to absorb all the knowledge”
Carrión claims his Puerto Rican identity. “I'm from H, not Travis. “I have the salsa
flow
Héctor Lavoe,” he sings at the beginning of his session with Bizarrap. Eladio Carrión was the first Puerto Rican to record with the Argentine super producer. His song has accumulated 220 million views on YouTube. The H is for Humacao, the town where he grew up, opposite Houston, the city where the world
trap
figure Travis Scott was born. Carrión has the best of both worlds: born in the United States, his first language was English and, judging by how he speaks to his entourage, in his daily life he jumps naturally between English and Spanish. He is probably the Puerto Rican artist with a style closest to American hip hop, but to rap he always uses Spanish.
Puerto Rico, the island of Bad Bunny, Myke Towers, Daddy Yankee, Arcángel or Rauw Alejandro, with whom he has collaborated. Why does such a small place rule the international scene? “It has always been the
powerhouse
of Latin urban music,” he responds. “There was even a time when if you weren't from there they didn't take you seriously. Then very powerful artists came out from all over. We have influences from different cultures; the Caribbean, the North American and hip hop. There is a lot going on there on that little island. I think it's because of everything we have around us, we adapt." The island is experiencing years of political instability. In 2019, Puerto Rican artists Ricky Martin, Residente and Bad Bunny led protests against Governor Ricardo Roselló, who ended up resigning. The current one, Pedro Pierluisi, outsourced the ownership of state electricity to the company Luma Energy and sudden power outages abound in the country. Bad Bunny criticized and analyzed this entire situation in his video-documentary
El Apagón
. “I am Luma
for
my haters because I am not going to give them light,” says Carrión on
Air France
. “There have been many years of bad administration in Puerto Rico. It happens there and in many more places in the world.” He breathes and reflects, again, on the importance of education in a society: “In Puerto Rico, the education system is failing. They are not supporting the teachers. In a perfect world I feel that teachers should be paid like doctors, because they are the ones who are molding people. But in Puerto Rico there are many good things happening at the same time as the bad ones,” he says.
Carrión has also collaborated with superstars of the urban genre from outside the island. There are many influences on him: Future, Lil Wayne or 50 Cent. He speaks as if he had it all figured out for years: “I already had the
feature
in my head for every American with whom I have collaborated, with songs saved for them. I know your tastes. I studied those artists a lot, I consumed them, I know their producers, what rhythms they were going to like…”
Eladio Carrión, freshly shaved and dressed as Gerrit Jacob. The glasses are CartierAdrián Cuerdo
On his right hand he has the logo of his first album,
Sauce Boy,
tattooed . A rose on a marijuana plant does not hide the fact that he loves cannabis. Many people got that same symbol tattooed with the release of that album. When he tells him, Carrión smiles and pats his back twice. “It's a movement. It is much more than music. When you treat music with respect and love it becomes more than just a job or money. This is already a commitment to society, to the community and to my fans. In the end, you are an influence for these children and adolescents.” Over time he is becoming an artist for the whole family. He says that he sees more and more parents with children at his concerts. Throughout his latest album he is aware of his responsibility as an artist. “One has to value what one is singing, because as an influence it is a lot. Especially if they are young children who are glued to YouTube, they are at the age of absorbing all the knowledge.” He confesses that he knows that there are songs that may have a “focus of ignorance”, but that he tries to give a product that is pure.
During the transition to the artist he is today, he slept in cars and on the sofas of his friends in the studios. His ambition to achieve his dream was gigantic. After all his global successes it is clear that he now does not lack liquidity. “I learned that money is not happiness,” he defends in
Fé, Cojones y Paciencia
. “Any person who has made a lot of money and has lived through both stages, having and not having, will tell you that it is not money that brings happiness. But anyone who has only lived with money will not know this. Money doesn't give happiness, it gives comfort. Happiness is when I see my babies smiling. I can't pay them 20 pesos to make them smile. You can't buy that,” he responds, too, smiling.
He is a worker: for Carrión, a recording session of less than 12 hours “is not a session.” He claims the importance of content in his songs and giving his all. Be a good influence and accumulate hits. He considers himself a
storyteller
of the experiences that people may have: “I like to tell stories. I don't like doing things just to do them. "It's a pleasure to put together that little movie in which you tell something in a song." What satisfies you most about his job? “That people feel identified with your music is the best thing about art. “I like to make people feel good at the end of the day.”
Have you ever felt empty with your successes? “What's up!” he responds quickly. “There is more work to do! I have the same hunger since the day I started. “I continue to grow, thank God, and that is what I want.” And the future? “New music, great
shows
and growing my beer brand or the SauceBoyz Fest,” he says, referring to his successful festival in Puerto Rico. He finishes the interview, he gets up quickly, shakes hands and says thank you. He quickly leaves the room with his team. They are waiting for you for photos with ICON. But first he has an appointment with his trusted barber, recently arrived from Seville. The first is the first.
Production Alfredo Santamaría / Makeup and hair: Miky Vallés (Another Artist) / Photography assistant: Luis Calvo / Production assistant: Nicole Katzky
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