The Artists Who Shaped My Sound

Gente siempre me preguntan qué tipo de música hago, y la verdad… nunca sé cómo explicarlo bien.

My sound comes from a lot of different influences and a lot of different genres. To be honest, I just like combining whatever I think sounds good, because at the end of the day, I’m the one making the music that I myself would like to hear, which is probably why I end up being my own #1 artist on Spotify Wrapped every year lol.

But when I really think about it, I’ve always loved music that could make me feel something, music that tells a story without words, or music that can make me dance without thinking. I think that’s why I’ve always loved sad music, because you can feel the pain of the artist, and when they wail that high note, it’s almost like they’re screaming to release their pain, just very controlled to make something pleasing to your ears. Same with upbeat music, it makes my body move on its own accord. That’s where some of my earliest influences came from: Michael Jackson and Danny Elfman.

Danny Elfman was in a band and a film composer at the same time. He’s best known for his work scoring Tim Burton movies, but for me, he composed the iconic theme for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. I rememeber hearing it when watching the Spider-Man 2 DVD I still have at home. It was heroic, dramatic, emotional, you could hear and feel all the emotions just watching the opening credits. I actually wanted to be a film composer originally because of that, and got super into movie soundtracks, I would spend hours listening to them because I just thought they sounded cool. Steve Jablonsky was another composer I loved, I knew him from the Transformers movies. Fun fact, his track “Matrix of Leadership” was the first ever song I listened to on Spotify back on February 1st, 2014.
Movie soundtracks tell a story without words. With just the music, you can visualize the scenes in your head ad remember the emotions you felt while watching them. I think that’s why I care a lot about the atmosphere and progression in my songs now. Whenever I’m looking through beats or structure songs, I want the instrumental itself to already feel emotional before I sing on it. That’s als why my music almost always has beat switches, bridges, key changes, or moments where the energy shifts. I don’t want them to stay in one place emotionally the whole time, I want my music to feel like scenes in movies changing in real time. Henry Jackman, Brian Tyler, Michael Giacchino, Hans Zimmer, they are all more composers I love and listened to.

I got a picture with the band that played Billie Jean after I had danced for the crowd. I wonder what they’re doing now.

The first actual music artist I became obsessed with was the legendary Michael Jackson. Every great performer of our generation traces back to him in some way. His performances, the aura, the choreo, he was larger than life, no wonder people passed out at his concerts. What inspired me most was his music videos. The way he combined music and film together during his time was revolutionary. Thriller, Smooth Criminal, Bad, they were experiences. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do, right now I’m still building to it, but eventually I want the budget and creative freedom to make visuals that are timeless and uniquely me. The Way You Make Me Feel was actually one of the biggest inspirations behind the MV for UN CHANCE MÁS. Maybe I’ll write about that next week lol.
My family used to play Michael Jackson at parties all the time and make me dance in front of everyone. I always felt like a circus monkey, but I did win a Transformers hot chocolate mug set from it and I still have one of the mugs to this day. I also vividly remember being at Rio in Gaithersburg when I was like 8 years old, and a live band started playing Billie Jean so I got up and started dancing in front of everyone. MJ has always been an inspiration to me and now more than ever after watching the Michael movie, I’ve felt so inspired from it.

I dressed up as Rauw Alejandro for Halloween the year he was touring for SATURNO.

Another huge inspiration for me now is Rauw Alejandro. I always listened to him since high school, but most of the time I had Bad Bunny playing in my ears. I discovered him through Spotify and that’s all I knew him from until SATURNO came out. I remember seeing a clip of the PUNTO 40 MV on instagram and I was like, “He dances???” And then I went down a rabbit hole of researching him and realized the was the future me I had always wanted to be. He’s confident, sexy, stylish, great with women, but also a performer. He is unapologetic about bringing dance to the latino urbano space, to reggaeton. People said whatever about him because of it, but I never saw it that way. Guys just don’t dance or see it as not manly, but I like to have fun versus standing against the wall at the club all night trying to look nonchalant. But what really separates Rauw to me is that he understands music is only part of the experience.

The visuals matter.
The live performances matter.
The transitions matter.
The aesthetic matters.
The world-building matters.

Saturno and Cosa Nuestra are perfect examples of that. Those projects are full worlds, not just songs. That’s something I want to do in the future when I finally make an EP or album, I want to create a world my listeners can live in and have fun while I’m at it. I like exploring sonic worlds because growing up, I always felt split between different worlds myself.

I’m too emotional for straight rap.
Too urban for pop.
Too melodic for hip-hop.
Too cinematic for traditional reggaetón.

But maybe that’s the point. All those influences mixed together eventually became me. I have gained something from every artist I’ve ever listened to. It’s like that saying, “you are who you surround yourself by.” I’ve listened to their work so much it’s a part of me, but anyone I’ve interacted with has also changed me in some way. And now I’m just trying to combine all of that into something that feels uniquely mine.