He has sold more than 10 million records, survived a high-profile marriage to J.Lo and is now — from a lavish new home base in Miami — building a management company of musicians and athletes to rival Jay Z’s Roc Nation. As he “steps up” against Trump, the GOP and music-business-as-usual, the odds are in his favor. “There are 610 million Latinos on the planet. If it works, we’ll be miles ahead of a lot of people."
MARC ANTHONY HAS SEEN the future, and it’s sitting next to him on a couch. It is three in the afternoon in Miami, on the kind of gorgeous, blustery spring day when the South Florida scenery — sky, sea, swaying palm fronds, pastel-painted buildings — seems to have been arranged by a meticulous set designer. Anthony is holding court in a small office on the second floor of the spiffy new headquarters of Magnus Media, the entertainment company he launched in March 2015.
The room is packed. There’s Anthony; his business partner, Magnus Media CEO Michel Vega; Anthony’s brother, Bigram Zayas, a longtime music industry insider and the co-founder of Loop Labs, an online tool for music collaboration; Anthony’s nephew, a producer and DJ who makes music under the name Develop. And then there’s the young man seated to Anthony’s left, Matt Hunter, a handsome, polite 18-year-old bilingual singer-songwriter of Colombian extraction, raised in New Jersey. Hunter has pursued the kind of guerrilla-style career plan modeled by Justin Bieber, posting videos on YouTube, building a sizable grass-roots following while attracting the attention of record executives. Today, Hunter is in Miami to discuss signing with Magnus Records and to be feted by Anthony, the improbably slight and youthful-looking 47-year-old Nuyorican legend who is among the biggest global superstars — and most powerful people — in Latin music.
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