I remember the ballads of the eighties when my mom was cleaning, sometimes I'd listen to, like, Amanda Miguel or something like that and I'll smell the Fabulous.
My father was a musician, a songwriter and he played at bars and restaurants and my mom was a secretary for an insurance company.
Coming from Puerto Rico and having that be my musical universe for the majority of my life no doubt strongly impacts my music.
This song 'Calma' has been a blessing, an unexpected one. When I wrote the song, I wasn't looking for a single, I never thought I was gonna have a world hit in my hands. I was connecting with my childhood.
Medalla is Puerto Rico's national treasure, as I call it. It's a Puerto Rican national beer - a great light beer for a beach day.
I used really into inline skating when it was the craze in the nineties and I got a really bad scar to prove it.
I saw my father writing songs and he would include me in the process when I was little so that kind of sparked my interest for the vocation.
Hearing that Alicia Keys liked the song, and wanted to join us on 'Calma' is an honor and blessing that really transcends what I can put into words. She's one of the most talented artists in the world, and someoneI've respected her for a long time.
We should be in constant evolution and adapt to the new without ever losing our essence or our integrity.
Music changes constantly, especially when you're a 'pop' artist. What's mainstream or pop always has new influences, new sounds, and I love that challenge of keeping up with it, which is important as a pop artist.
I come from a very musical family, and a songwriter, a musician, is a byproduct of the influences of his life, whether cultural, artistically, or emotionally.
Growing up Latino is having a grandmother dancing when she's cooking. It's music all over the place. It's endless Christmases. It's, ah, twenty thousand cousins. It's yummy food.