REGGAETON'S COMEBACK KING

Anuel AA talks bouncing back from prison, his relationship with Karol G and his most personal tattoos.

- LUCAS VILLA

I’m a super fan,” Anuel AA says of the Goku and Vegeta tattoos on his left arm. “Everybody that has lived that street life is a fan of ‘Dragon Ball Z.’ They’re like soldiers and that’s why I identify with them.” In 2018, Latin music became the fifth-most consumed genre of music in the U.S., placing ahead of country music. As the genre continues to do impressive numbers, the superheroes of the Latin movement are the reggaetoneros, or reggaetón music artists. This year, Anuel was one of two Latin artists to achieve the Herculean feat of debuting inside the top 10 of the all-genre Billboard 200 chart. For Anuel to soar to such heights with his “Emmanuel” LP, he had to come back from rock bottom.

Emmanuel Gazmey Santiago grew up in Carolina, Puerto Rico, where reggaetón music was cultivated. In the early 2000s, reggaetoneros like Daddy Yankee, Tego Caulderón and Don Omar helped popularize the once-underground genre on a global scale. “If it wasn’t for them, like, all they did in reggaetón, there would be no Anuel,” he says. At the time, his father, José Gazmey, was the vice president of Sony Music Puerto Rico’s A&R department, so a young Anuel was able to connect with those icons. “Thank God I met them when I was a little kid,” he says. “It was meant to be. I see it like that.”