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At Houston’s NRG Stadium on Aug. 29, Karol G invited a special guest to join her onstage: her international tour’s opening act, the Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko. Clad in a vibrant pink crop top and matching baggy pants, Young Miko took Karol by the hand as the two sang their collaborative hit, “Dispo,” moving […]
At Houston’s NRG Stadium on Aug. 29, Karol G invited a special guest to join her onstage: her international tour’s opening act, the Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko. Clad in a vibrant pink crop top and matching baggy pants, Young Miko took Karol by the hand as the two sang their collaborative hit, “Dispo,” moving in perfect harmony in an undulating perreo-style dance.
Amid the ecstatic cheers of fans, it was Karol, not the newcomer, who betrayed a rare glimpse of nerves as she admitted, “Ahora soy yo la que me puse nerviosa!” (“Now it’s me who has gotten nervous!”)
Miko’s meteoric rise from nascent local sensation to captivating performer capable of holding her own beside a global superstar is a testament to her undeniable talent. In just over one year, Billboard‘s 2023 Latin Rookie of the Year has broken out of her native Puerto Rico’s música urbana scene, performing with heavyweights like Karol and Bad Bunny as well as headlining her own Trap Kitty world tour of nearly 50 cities across the Americas and Spain.
“I feel incredible — a world tour! At least this early in my career,” Miko says, still sounding awestruck.
She has also been ascending the Billboard charts. “Dispo” peaked at No. 22 on Hot Latin Songs, and she made her Billboard Hot 100 debut in July with “Classy 101,” a smooth reggaetón number with Colombian star Feid. “It was definitely a shocker,” Miko told Billboard in June. “Usually one sees Beyoncé, Taylor Swift or The Weeknd on the Hot 100. To see my name is very surreal, a reminder that this is really happening and that people are consuming [my music].”
Lia Clay Miller
Lia Clay Miller
While her name now shares the charts with music’s biggest stars, not long ago, the 24-year-old artist born María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano Cardona was leveraging another form of artistic expression — tattooing — to finance her music. “The goal was always to start tattooing so I could afford my music dreams and eventually let go of the machine,” she says. “Thanks to tattoos, I was able to start paying for studio time.”
Since arriving on the global Latin pop scene, Miko has both played into and inverted male-centric Latin tropes with bold and raunchy lyrics that draw on her experience as a queer woman while boosting the LGBTQ+ community. “When I started writing music, I was like, ‘F–k it. People already know I’m gay, and why would I sing to men?’ Respectfully,” she adds with a chuckle, “if I don’t like men, I’m not going to dedicate a song to one.”
Her commitment to authenticity allowed her to carve out a place as a singular, hyper-femme queer rapper in música urbana with an unmatched, unhurried flow that has captivated a growing fan base that she calls Mikosexuals.
“For a lot of people, I came out of nowhere and caught a drastic boom — but in reality, we’ve been doing this for a really long time,” she explains. “SoundCloud played a big role in letting me test these waters that I had never explored before. We didn’t have any other resources. We had the talent, the idea, the vision, the work ethic.”
Lia Clay Miller
That drive paid off when Angelo Torres, co-founder and head of Puerto Rican indie label Wave Music Group, came across Miko while scrolling through Twitter on a flight in 2020. “This SoundCloud link popped up of this girl with pink hair and tattoos,” Torres remembers. “I was instantly captivated when I heard her tracks. There was something undeniably intriguing about her sound. [I thought,] ‘I really need to meet this person.’ ”
Torres and producer Caleb Calloway established Wave in 2021 and signed Miko several months after. Calloway, who would become pivotal to her rise, first collaborated with her on “Puerto Rican Mami” when she only had a couple of songs released on SoundCloud. That track arrived in December 2021. By July 2022, Miko was onstage at Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot in San Juan with Bad Bunny, performing her viral trap song “Riri.”
To Calloway, Miko’s sincerity remains the key to her success. “She has always maintained her originality, never letting fame alter her essence,” he says. “Miko was that artist that was able to finally fit in exactly to where my sound was and then take it to another level with her Y2K flow, with her singing and then rapping, and me doing the beat. It just sounds like we’ve been together our whole lives, and we’ve only been working for three years.”
Lia Clay Miller
Young Miko photographed on September 11, 2023 in New York.
Lia Clay Miller
Alongside Calloway and her longtime producer Mauro, Miko has crafted hits like “Riri” and this year’s “Wiggy” and “Lisa.” Her debut album, Trap Kitty, and the singles that have followed showcase her laid-back approach to trap, rap and reggaetón — a refreshing blend of boldness and nonchalance.
“We sensed tremendous excitement around Young Miko,” says Jeremy Vuernick, president of A&R at Capitol Music Group, which locked in a long-term distribution deal with Wave in April. “One of the most exciting things about Young Miko, aside from her incredible ability as a songwriter and storyteller, is the way that she’s able to connect with her audience.” And her unwavering authenticity and fiery passion have struck a chord with fans across the globe.
“It has been a year filled with a lot of learning, both professionally and as a person. It all happened so fast, but I’m surrounded by people who just want the best for me — people who have been with me since day one,” Miko says. “There are many new things that seem unreal, but I’m grateful. I’m growing, I’m learning, I’m evolving. I just know that the best is yet to come.”
Young Miko will speak at Billboard Latin Music Week, taking place Oct. 2 – Oct. 6. To register, click here.
This story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023, issue of Billboard.
When Edgar Barrera first thought of bringing Bad Bunny and Grupo Frontera together for a collaboration, he thought to himself, “Wait, what am I even saying? That could never happen.” But like so many of the Mexican American songwriter-producer’s genre-bending ideas, this one didn’t just work out — it became a smash. The cumbia-norteña track “un x100to” peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May.
“To have the biggest artist, whom I had been wanting to work with, collaborate with a group from my hometown and record a cumbia, which is the music I grew up listening to with my dad, it was crazy and a full-circle moment in my career,” Barrera says today. “Sometimes I sound delusional, but the crazy thing is that the impossible happened.”
Ten years into Barrera’s career, his ability to effortlessly move across genres has made him one of the most sought-after songwriters in Latin music, with collaborators including Maluma (“Hawái”), Christian Nodal (“No Te Contaron Mal”), Grupo Firme (“Ya Supérame”), Camilo (“Vida de Rico”), Becky G (“Chanel”) and Marc Anthony (“De Vuelta Pa’ la Vuelta”), in addition to non-Latin stars such as Ariana Grande (“Boyfriend,” with Social House) and Shawn Mendes (his “KESI” remix with Camilo). In January 2021, he topped four genre charts — pop, rhythm, tropical and regional Mexican airplay — with four different songs, something no other Latin songwriter had done before. “That moment was really special,” says Barrera, 33, who also won the 2021 Latin Grammy for producer of the year. “I remember when I heard about it, I kept calling people in the industry asking, ‘Is this normal?’ ”
Extraordinary moments have defined the career of Billboard’s 2023 Latin Groundbreaker, who grew up near the border between Roma, Texas, and Ciudad Miguel Alemán in Tamaulipas, Mexico. At 6 years old, he created a rock band with his brother, cousins and a friend, who were all around his age. “I swear there are photos of me playing a guitar that was bigger than me,” he says with a laugh. “And I would write songs too. The first ones were really bad — they were about teddy bears — but come on, I was a little kid.”
It was around that time that he also started joining his father, a cumbia artist, at the studio or watching him rehearse with his band. Later, as a teen, Barrera handed out business cards and CDs with songs he had written to artists leaving local radio stations after their interviews. He still has one of those old business cards, which he proudly shows off. “I would go home and just keep hitting refresh on my Hotmail in case someone wrote, but no one ever did,” he says with a shrug.
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Still, his hustle landed him an internship across the country in Miami with songwriter-producer Andrés Castro. “It was the best decision I could’ve ever made,” he says. “I started off as an engineer, [but] I remember when artists would come to the studio, I’d make sure to tell them, ‘Hey, I’m not really an engineer. I’m a songwriter and producer.’ And I’d show them my music. I got into a lot of problems because you’re not really supposed to talk to them directly. But I preferred to ask for forgiveness later than to ask for permission. And it worked: I got what I wanted.” Later, Castro would take Barrera to Sony Music Publishing Latin America, where he was signed by president/CEO Jorge Mejía.
Now, Barrera is laser focused on BorderKid Records, an imprint he launched in February 2022, with emerging acts Alex Luna and Neeus along with marquee client Grupo Frontera on his roster. When Barrera signed the six-piece last October, it was already a popular local band in McAllen, Texas, and had just landed its first big hit, “No Se Va,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Hot Latin Songs chart.
“We’re from the same place, so we all know each other, and one day, my compadre, who had hired them to perform at his tire shop opening, kept sending me videos telling me that they wanted to meet me,” Barrera explains. Their partnership began with a meet-up at a local Starbucks. “He believed in us from the start,” says vocalist-accordionist Juan Javier Cantú. “When we first met, he asked us where we saw the group going and we told him, but he told us that we were thinking too small and that we could go so much further. He pushed us to dream big.”
Edgar Barrera photographed on September 6, 2023 in Miami.
Natalia Aguilera
And now, Grupo Frontera is the latest Barrera success story. In August, its debut album, El Comienzo, bowed and peaked at No. 3 on the Top Latin Albums chart, and in the past year alone, the group — a 15-time finalist at the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards — has placed eight songs on the Hot 100.
“I promised myself that, from now on, I would work only on projects that I feel really passionate about and make me feel something,” Barrera says. “With BorderKid, it’s that. I want to be that bridge between new artists, songwriters and producers and their goals.”
Edgar Barrera will speak at Billboard Latin Music Week, taking place Oct. 2 – Oct. 6. To register, click here.
This story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Peso Pluma, Jasiel Nuñez and Junior H combine forces with “Bipolar,” as the song debuts at No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart dated Sept. 23. While Pluma has previously teamed up with both Mexican artists, “Bipolar” is the first three-way effort by the corridos singers.
“Bipolar” launches at No. 7 on Hot Latin Songs fueled by streaming and radio activity. According to Luminate, the song registered 7.9 million official U.S. streams during the Sept. 8-14 tracking week, to yield a No. 4 start on Latin Streaming Songs; it’s a first top 10 for Nuñez there. The song also surges 45-31 on the overall Latin Airplay with a 25% gain in audience impressions, to 3.6 million. Sales, meanwhile, account for a negligible amount but enough to open at No. 5 on Latin Digital Song Sales. Hot Latin Songs blends airplay, streaming data, and digital sales.
Nuñez, a newly signed artist to Peso Pluma’s Double P Records label, scores his first top 10 on the multi-metric Hot Latin Songs. He’s Pluma’s frequent collaborator, landing two other entries on his Billboard chart career which began in 2023. The co-billed “Rosa Pastel” reached a No. 20 high in July, while “Lagunas” peaked at No. 13 on the Aug. 19-dated ranking.
Junior H, meanwhile, picks up his fifth top 10, four of which are Pluma partnerships. His own “El Azul” earned the 23-year-old his first entry to the upper region in May.
As for Pluma, he logs his 15th top 10 hit, including two champs. He last reached the top 10 through Karol G’s four-week ruler “Qlona” (Sept. 2-dated list).
Pluma, Nuñez and Junior H’s collaboration becomes the fourth top 10 debut by three or more artists overall in 2023. Notably, all but one belongs to Pluma, and all are regional Mexican songs. Here’s the list of top 10 tripartite entries this year:
Peak Position, Title, Artists, Peak DateNo. 10, “VVS,” Peso Pluma, Edgardo Nunez & Los Dareyes de La Sierra, July 8,No. 8, “Que Onda,” Calle 24 x Chino Pacas x Fuerza Regida, Sept. 16No. 3, “Lady Gaga,” Peso Pluma, Gabito Ballesteros & Junior H, Sept. 23No. 7, “Bipolar,” Peso Pluma, Jasiel Nuñez and Junior H, Sept. 23
Beyond its top 10 debut on Hot Latin Songs, “Bipolar” rises to a new No. 13 peak on Regional Mexican Airplay. Plus, it debuts at No. 60 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, at No. 86 on Billboard Global 200 and at No. 175 on Global Excl. U.S. charts.
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Breakups are always hard — especially when media and children are involved. Shakira opened up about how her split from professional footballer Gerard Piqué has affected the former couple’s two sons, nine-year-old Milan and seven-year-old Sasha. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “They’re doing very well,” she told […]
The 2023 Billboard Latin Music Week — the longest running and biggest Latin music industry gathering in the world — is making way to Miami from Oct. 2 to 6, featuring star-studded panels, Q&A conversations, workshops and the En Vivo concert series.
Confirmed acts for this year’s weeklong conference and showcases include Shakira, Arcángel, RBD’s Christian Chávez, Christopher von Uckermann, and Maite Perroni, Beatriz Luengo, Carin León, Chencho Corleone, DannyLux, DJ Alex Sensation, DJ Nelson, Edgar Barrera, Eladio Carrión, Feid, Fonseca, GALE, Gonza, Greeicy, Grupo Frontera, Hyde, Ivy Queen, Fuerza Regida’s Jesús Ortiz Paz “JOP,” Keityn, Lasso, Luny Tunes, Maffio, Manuel Turizo, Maria Becerra, Mike Bahía, Myke Towers, Nacho, Natanael Cano, Nathy Peluso, Nicki Nicole, Pedro Capó, Peso Pluma, Santa Fe Klan, Sebastián Yatra, Thalía, Venesti, Vico C, Wisin, Yng Lvcas and Young Miko.
In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, which coincides with Latin Music Week, we curated the ultimate playlist featuring the hits of yesterday and today of all the artists set to speak at the conference.
Songs in the more than three-hour long playlist include Shakira and Fuerza Regida’s latest corrido “El Jefe,” Grupo Frontera and Peso Pluma’s “Tulum,” Manuel Turizo’s “La Bachata” and Myke Towers’ “Lala,” to name a few bangers.
Celebrated for more than 30 years, Billboard Latin Music Week also coincides with the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards, which will be broadcast live on Telemundo on Thursday, Oct. 5, from the Watsco Center in Miami.
Registration for the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Week is now open at BillboardLatinMusicWeek.com.
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For 2023, Billboard introduces the Latin Power Players Choice Award, a peer-voted accolade chosen by Billboard Pro members to honor the executive they believe has made the most impact across the Latin music business over the past year. After three rounds of voting, Billboard Pro members have chosen Walter Kolm, founder and CEO of WK […]
The first time Nelson Albareda promoted a show at the Madison Square Garden complex in New York — not at the arena proper, but at the 5,600-capacity theater beneath it — everyone told him, “You’re going to lose your ass.” Albareda, a Miami-born Cuban, had assembled what to him was a dream lineup: a 50th-anniversary celebration of groundbreaking salsa artist and Fania Records co-founder Johnny Pacheco, featuring Pacheco and the Fania All-Stars. Still, his detractors were right: Albareda lost $200,000 on the 2006 show.
But after the music ended, the promoter was still buzzing. At midnight, he took his parents, who had attended, to a nearby deli, where his father asked, “How are you laughing? You lost 200 grand!”
“Well, it’s part of the business,” Albareda told him. “We keep moving on.”
Seventeen years later, Albareda, now 47, stands by that take. “In this business, you lose money, and it’s not how quickly you fall but how quickly you come back,” he says.
That fearlessness has helped Albareda become one of today’s most successful music executives. After nearly two decades working at labels and in radio, marketing and concert promotion, including as the leader of his formidable company Eventus, Albareda founded Loud And Live in 2017. The forward-thinking outfit’s flywheel-style model combines independent concert promotion — in 2022, it ranked at No. 14 on Billboard Boxscore’s year-end promoters chart with $96.5 million grossed, propelled by major tours including arena runs by Camilo and Ricardo Arjona — with marketing, brand partnerships and a content development studio. Loud And Live’s breadth reflects Albareda’s own guiding ethos, which emphasizes a broader culture and how disparate revenue streams fit into it, rather than focusing on just one or two of those streams.
“I was very proud of my culture and my heritage, and I wanted to give back,” Albareda says. “I got into music because of culture and because of pride, not necessarily because of the business — even though I ended up being in the business.”
For Albareda, who grew up in Miami during a “golden age” for music in the city in the 1980s, running Loud And Live is a natural fit. As a kid, he would listen to any cassettes or CDs he could get his hands on — he cites Cuban salsa singer Willie Chirino as a childhood favorite and inspiration — and he fondly recalls attending the Calle Ocho festival, where he saw Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine perform.
“I grew up in a moment where Miami defined different sounds within the music business and always wanted to be part of that, primarily because of culture and the heritage of my parents,” he says.
Albareda’s entrée into the industry, while circuitous, laid the foundation for his interdisciplinary career. As a Miami Dade College freshman, he scored a meeting with Bacardi executives and successfully pitched “a branded entertainment concept … mixing music and cigars and the whole lifestyle around a big band.” As the project of “creating a 1950s, 1960s tropical salsa band” commenced, the team enlisted Celia Cruz — and when executives from her label, RMM, got to know Albareda, they offered him a publicity job in-house. RMM was distributed by Universal, then affiliated with the Bronfman family, which owned beverage conglomerate Seagrams; Albareda shared office space with the spirits division and began consulting for the likes of Absolut and Chivas Regal. The experience was formative, and after leaving RMM, he logged time at advertising agency Sanchez and Levitan before landing in radio at Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., where he deployed his passions for music and marketing.
“I saw an opportunity to make money on everything but the radio,” Albareda says. “I started a team that would do events, concerts, festivals — and then we also would go to the brands and say, ‘Hey, you’re Procter & Gamble. How do I help you?’ ”
Albareda understood the deep bond between radio audiences, particularly Hispanic listeners, and their favorite stations — and how it could be harnessed to deliver returns to brand partners. “You listened to that morning show, and you trusted that morning show,” he says. “You trusted the conviction that those are your friends. You wake up every day with them; you drive home with them. That’s what I built: You had the relationship with the artists, you had the relationship with the brands, you have the relationship with the listeners.”
As the company underwent changes, culminating in its absorption into Univision, Albareda realized, “Hey, I can do this without radio. Let me go on my own and really focus on this.” His first, short-lived attempt, a company called Unipro Group, failed when the 26-year-old Albareda misjudged the viability of a Christmas event and lost $3 million. “It was a decisive moment in my life,” he says now. “You realize when you’re at the bottom, you don’t have that many friends.”
After regrouping, in early 2005, he founded Eventus, which would focus on marketing and brands — not just because he knew the area well, but because he now lacked the capital to put on events. Eventus’ first client was the Latin Recording Academy, then still relatively new and looking to grow its footprint. Albareda helped it do just that, particularly through the sponsorship-driven event property Latin Grammy Street Parties, which staged open-air festivals in major cities nationwide. Brands took notice.
“We became the go-to guys for corporate America to connect anything that was culture with brands, specifically in the multicultural market,” Albareda says. “Our core was Hispanic. One by one, we started growing, and we built a company that worked with 60 brands. McDonald’s, Walmart, Dr Pepper, Verizon … those were all clients of ours.”
From left: El Alfa, Nelson Albareda, and Silvestre Dangond photographed on September 5, 2023 at Loud And Live in Doral, Fla.
Melody Timothee
With 40% growth year over year, Eventus also had runway to enter concert promotion, and Albareda focused on the South Florida market. After selling Eventus, now one of America’s biggest multicultural marketing players, to Advantage Solutions in 2013, Albareda remained as CEO until 2016, when he struck out on his own (on May 20, Cuban Independence Day, he observes) with a noncompete clause and free time to boat, fish and develop the kernel of the idea that would become Loud And Live.
“We are marketers turned promoters — versus a lot of the entertainment companies out there, and a lot of the promoters out there want to become marketers,” Albareda says of launching his current company in 2017. Because he understood “what brands want,” he could facilitate the types of partnerships that help make tours profitable. But his decision to focus on touring at Loud And Live before branching out into agency work — effectively reversing his Eventus path — was also borne of necessity: His noncompete around live entertainment expired first.
“When we started, artists would pick up our calls because of brands, but they didn’t necessarily trust us with touring,” Albareda says. To build Loud And Live’s reputation, he deviated from the industry trend — “Everybody was going after urban,” he recalls — and decided to pursue “five or six iconic artists that we can make an impact [with] and that other artists look up to.” He began with Juan Luis Guerra and later added Arjona, Carlos Vives, Franco De Vita and Ricardo Montaner, who all then spread the gospel of Loud And Live. And once Albareda was able to reenter the agency space with Loud And Live, what the company could offer clients clarified.
“The businesses here are all synergistic,” he says. “The way that we treat artists, we are their partner when they’re touring and when they’re not touring. We’re not that promoter that signs a deal, puts a tour [on and says,] ‘See ya.’ ”
Loud And Live’s attentiveness to its clients runs “from the manager to the engineer all the way up to the manager to the artist,” Albareda explains, and while he’s emphatic that “in this business anybody can write a check; we can write a check,” it has helped the company compete with deeper-pocketed, more established competitors.
“They’ve bet a lot on me and will continue to do so,” says Colombian vallenato artist Silvestre Dangond, who will embark on his fifth Loud And Live-promoted tour in 2024. “We have a lot of love for each other. I feel like he’s not even my promoter because of the way he talks to me. He has created a team that’s a hybrid of who he is, with his personality, his positivity, good energy. He’s very decent and very human.”
Adds WK Entertainment founder/CEO Walter Kolm, who manages Dangond and other Loud And Live clients like Vives and Prince Royce: “Nelson is a promoter, but his advantage is that he also thinks like a manager. On top of being a hard worker and great at his job, Nelson is such a kind human, and [that] makes working with him the greatest pleasure.”
The pandemic interrupted Loud And Live’s growth, but now the company is firing on all cylinders. After orchestrating a partnership between McDonald’s and J Balvin in 2020, Loud And Live has continued connecting the restaurant chain with artists including Prince Royce, Nicky Jam and Manuel Turizo. The company’s brand portfolio now includes Pepsi, Walmart, Mattel and Michael Kors. When Becky G embarked on her first headlining tour on Sept. 14, she did it with Loud And Live as her promoter — and with a fresh Vita Coco partnership facilitated by the company. Other fall tours for the promoter include U.S. runs by Vives, El Alfa and Diego El Cigala.
With in-person concerts on pause during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Loud And Live was able to grow its content division more quickly than anticipated, and it won a Latin Grammy for its 2021 Juan Luis Guerra concert special. When Lionel Messi signed with Inter Miami CF, the soccer team (already a Loud And Live client) turned to Albareda to help roll out the superstar’s arrival — and Loud And Live assembled LaPresentaSíon, a concert featuring Camilo, Tiago PZK and more. (“All music artists look up to athletes; all athletes look up to artists,” Albareda says.)
And philanthropically, in keeping with his MO that his work place the culture, not business, first, Albareda announced a $1 million donation to the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation late last year; the funds, to be disbursed over five years, will go toward college scholarships, grants and educational programs.
“Throughout his career, Nelson has been an avid supporter of the Latin Recording Academy and our sister organization, the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation, donating time and resources to our events as well as engaging as an advocate to share our mission and vision with artists,” says Latin Recording Academy CEO Manuel Abud. “Among [his] greatest professional strengths are the intangible qualities that are from the heart, particularly his passion for Latin music.”
But despite Loud And Live’s success, Albareda still possesses the scrappy drive that fueled him at his Garden debut nearly 20 years ago. The father of three says he works 18-hour days, adding that his “aspiration is to be the leading Latin promoter and entertainment company in the world.” Immediately before the pandemic, Loud And Live partnered with Move Concerts, a major Latin American promoter that works across genres, to increase its presence in Central and South America, and Albareda is now eyeing expansion into Europe.
And his vision isn’t restricted to Latin music: In November, Thomas Rhett and Sam Hunt will headline the inaugural Country Bay Music Festival, Loud And Live’s first foray into the country market and an attempt to introduce a major country festival in Miami. “Country is a genre that is very similar in culture to Latin,” Albareda observes. “It’s a tight-knit community of family, core values, every song is a story — and we also know that Hispanics overindex in country music. Over 30% of country music fans in the U.S. today identify of Latino origin … My great-great-grandfather came here in 1876. Why is it that I can’t do country music?”
As he navigates a turbulent industry and the attendant pivots, Albareda returns to essential traits like perseverance, determination and trustworthiness. “We don’t sell widgets,” he says. “We sell relationships.”
Additional reporting by Griselda Flores.
This story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023, issue of Billboard.
The Jenni Rivera Estate has filed a lawsuit against Cintas Acuario, a West Coast-based indie label owned by the late singer’s father Don Pedro Rivera. Ayana Musical, another music company also owned by him, is named in a complaint filed on Wednesday (Sept. 20) in California by Jacquelin Campos — who last year took over as head of the Jenni Rivera estate.
According to the 39-page lawsuit, before and after the singer’s untimely death in 2012, the música mexicana star’s father, along with the companies aforementioned, “exploited” sound recordings and musical compositions written, recorded, produced and performed by Jenni during her lifetime. Furthermore, the defendants “exploited Jenni’s name, image and likeness to the tune of tens of millions of dollars,” the complaint alleges.
The civil case also claims that the plaintiffs have “repeatedly” asked the companies to “act in accordance to the terms of agreements entered into by Jenni during the early part of her career” and to stop claiming to own and control rights to Jenni’s music. The companies have refused to do so, according to the suit, which is why the Jenni Rivera Estate has decided to file the lawsuit, “holding each of them liable for their unlawful acts” and seeking the return of money collected and withheld from the plaintiffs.
While owned by Don Pedro Rivera, the lawsuit says the day-to-day operations of the company are carried out by Jenni’s siblings, Rosie Rivera — who previously served as head of the Jenni Rivera estate — and Juan Rivera. “This matter provides a perfect illustration of the significant and lasting impact that money, power, and greed can have on a family,” the lawsuit reads.
Cintas Acuario did not return Billboard‘s request for comment at press time.
Jenni entered her first recording agreement with Cintas Acuario in 1993 when she began her career. According to the lawsuit, the three-year deal provided Cintas with “several” rights to the sound recordings and albums recorded, produced and distributed under the 1993 Recording Agreement. It also granted the rights to manufacture and distribute merchandise in connection to the promotion and sale of her music. In return, Cintas was “obligated” to provide Jenni with statements and make royalty payments to her on a quarterly basis. According to the complaint, “the obligation to account and pay royalties owed to Jenni in connection with the 1993 deal was never waived or otherwise terminated. Thus, the foregoing obligations subsisted in favor of plaintiffs as Jenni’s successors-in-interest, following her death in December of 2012.”
The most successful woman in regional Mexican on the Billboard charts, Rivera died in an small aircraft accident in 2012 at the age of 43. She has a total of 19 entries on Top Latin Albums, 12 of which reached the top 10 and seven of which topped the chart. She has earned a total of 12 entries on the Billboard 200 and has 14 top 10 hits on the Regional Mexican Airplay tally. Most recently, Jenni’s children released the posthumous album Misión Cumplida.
In a press release issued in light of the lawsuit, the Jenni Rivera Estate said that it is “grateful for the support and understanding of the fans during this challenging period” but will refrain from making any further statements.
Read the lawsuit below: