Vibras! How J Balvin took on Englishlanguage pop – and won
If I had to make a personal playlist for the past decade, J Balvin’s 2012’s early reggaeton track Tranquila would make the cut because of the nostalgia it conjures up around sunshine, good food and dancing with cute Colombian boys. That year, I was living my best life in Bogotá, and Tranquila blasted out of nightclubs, bodegas and Blackberrys up and down the country. Its rather corny music video was shot in Cartagena, far away from the touristy colonial city, and presented a skinny Balvin covered in tattoos – but any bad-boy image that he might have had was undercut by his bouncy dance moves, fresh face and cheeky smile.
At the time, few could have predicted that Balvin would ensure Colombia claimed its space not just in the world of reggaeton, which has traditionally been dominated by Puerto Rico and Panama, but beyond Latin music, seeping into the bloodstream of music scenes across the globe.
Today, you don’t need to be anywhere near Colombia to hear Balvin’s music – he’s the fifth most streamed artist on Spotify internationally, with more than 53 million listeners a month. Ahead of him are Ed Sheeran, Post Malone, Camila Cabello and Khalid, all predominantly Anglophone artists. Puerto Rico’s Daddy Yankee sits at No 10, and although he is perhaps the most recognised face in Latin music, thanks to the enduring popularity of 2004’s
Gasolina and the record-breaking success of Despacito in 2017, Balvin has arguably done more to shape the international music landscape of the past decade.
As well as being the charismatic go-to for the infectious fun and sensuality that makes Latin music so appealing, an impressive, tactical body of collaborations with international artists has helped maximise his reach in different markets. Safari, his 2016 single with Pharrell Williams cemented his international standing; in 2017 he collaborated with French artist Willy Williams for Mi Gente, generating 2.5bn views on YouTube, and when Beyoncé jumped on the remix a few months later she switched to singing in Spanish, a clear indicator of Balvin’s influence.
He is almost always the centrepiece of each collaboration he does, singing exclusively in Spanish – just like other popular Latin acts like Daddy Yankee and Bad Bunny, despite the fact that they all speak fluent English. But Balvin in particular has used the space that he has carved out in the Anglophone market to pull in other artists, including Brazilian pop icon Anitta, with whom he released two tracks – Downtown in 2017 and Machika in 2018 – both of which helped launch her international career.
In her Netflix series Vai Anitta, which documents her transition from the Brazilian scene into America, Anitta ends the recording session for Machika with Balvin and his producer Sky Rompiendo by humbly thanking them, saying: “In Brazil, I’m like huge, but here I’m like nobody … and you guys are doing something for me that nobody else has.”
In 2018, J Balvin had his first No 1 single on the US Billboard Hot 100 on Cardi B’s I Like It, alongside Puerto Rican trap star Bad Bunny. In spring 2018, I managed to scam my way into Coachella as a backing dancer (a long story) and my highlights were Beyoncé’s epic Homecoming and Cardi B’s set, where she twerked with abandon at five months pregnant. Both of these performances featured guest appearances by Balvin; Beyoncé’s only other guests were Jay-Z and Destiny’s Child.
Balvin, though, is merely the most successful figure to have leveraged the democratisation of music through streaming platforms and social media, maintained his mother tongue, and brought a unique identity to a young, curious, global audience: this globalisation of indigenous pop is one of the defining stories of the decade.
Elsewhere at Coachella that year there was a noticeable rise in the number of international acts performing, with France being particularly well represented. Afro-trap rapper MHD, French-Moroccan DJ Petit Biscuit, French-Cuban twins Ibeyi and even Jean-Michel Jarre made the lineup. These artists, like Balvin and his fellow Latinos, all perform predominantly in their own language, and yet were received warmly by the rainbowglittered English speakers at Coachella.
France is an interesting case study, as it has always been very protective of its cultural identity. In 2018, President Emmanuel Macron launched a campaign to make French the first language in Africa – a plan described by celebrated Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou as a form of linguistic colonisation – but efforts to protect the French language have bolstered the French music scene, and urban music has been an unlikely beneficiary of this drive.
Growing up, we had a pirate satellite box at home, programmed to watch French cable so that my dad could get all of the channels his family were watching in Algeria. This meant having access to French MTV – very exciting – but all the American shows were