People say, 'We’re going to wait for elections.’ Really? Most of the time, people steal elections, so it’s important to go to the streets and protest. Otherwise you’re not going to have that power to tell the government what to do and what you want. “If you’re negotiating, you have to have power. “I think that protests are our bargaining power,” he explained. With nearly 10 million combined followers on Twitter and Instagram, Residente stays connected with his fans, but he also uses social media to highlight social and political issues, and he encourages the Latinx community to embrace activism. I try to do things that connect me with the past.” And that’s what I do all the time when I go back. For my birthday, my friends from high school and college, I connected with them, the people that knew me before I got famous. I lost contact with them, so now since a year or two ago, I started to get connected with them. You don’t talk with your friends anymore and the people who grew up with you. You kind of feel disconnected from who you are. ”In the song, I talk about that, about missing who I am, or who I was, since I first started 15 years ago. He channeled those emotions into his new single, “René.” The music video, which was filmed in Puerto Rico, has racked up more than 72 million views on YouTube in less than a month.
I called my mom, I had a stadium full of people in Mexico waiting for me to perform, and I didn’t want to perform.” It was a moment that I’ve never felt before. I felt that I didn’t want to be here anymore. As his solo career began to take off, he started to feel detached from his old life. In 2015, Residente announced work on his solo project. The alternative rap duo released five albums together, garnered worldwide recognition, and became the most decorated group in Latin GRAMMY history.
In 2004, Residente and his stepbrother, Visitante, founded Calle 13. in Fine Arts from the Escuela de Artest Plásticas before earning a Masters in Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design. In high school, he split his time between playing baseball and indulging in the arts. He taught himself to play guitar as a child, took drum and saxophone lessons and joined his school band at age 12. As unconventional as it may seem, his fascination with the science of music is an example of his free-spirited creative technique.īorn René Juan Pérez Joglar in the Hato Rey ward of San Juan, Puerto Rico, the 42-year-old performer grew up surrounded by art. On his single, “El Pecador” (“The Sinner”), Residente converted brain waves from a Muslim man praying into music that he commissioned a Christian choir to perform. If there’s one main creative component connecting Residente and Bad Bunny, it's their flair for the unorthodox. Residente's friendship with the reggaeton star is “based out of respect and admiration,” which makes it easy to work together, he explained. The project features guest appearances from artists that he “admires,” including Busta Rhymes, Jessie Reyez, and his good friend, Bad Bunny. You have a different kind of freedom on the album, it’s nice." “I started to create concept albums like that but then I stopped because it was very hard. It was going to take me, like, two years, so I started to work with what I was feeling and what I have in my head. With his latest album, Residente opted against following the same blueprint as its predecessor, namely because of timing. Sometimes I felt like I was super small, like, ‘Wow, the world is huge!’ Sometimes I felt like the world is so small.” The rhythm and the tempos, sounds like salsa music, I was able to understand it better. Musically speaking, when I went to Africa, I was able to detect the Afro-Caribbean beats to understand where they came from.
“I know that it sounds like a cliche, but it’s nice to pass through different countries and see yourself. We come from everywhere, so I went to Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, Siberia, China, Serbia, and Russia,” he said. A post shared by Los Angeles Philharmonic is no stranger to moving a crowd, and having trekked around the world to make his 2017 self-titled solo debut, he’s not above going the extra mile for his music. “I always create concept albums.