He shot to fame as a rough, provocative counterpart to his fellow chart toppers. On ‘Emmanuel,’ he’s ready to show the musical pedigree few knew he had — and level up to global stardom.
It’s 7 p.m. on a Thursday night, and Anuel — the Latin trap superstar formerly known as Anuel AA — only woke up an hour ago. That’s because he went to bed at 10 a.m. For the past several weeks, he’s been staying at The Hit Factory/Criteria in Miami until the wee hours of the morning, mastering his second album, Emmanuel.
“I just want it to come out already,” he says, pulling his already low-slung black baseball cap even lower over his eyes so it grazes his diamond-studded ears. “I’ve spent months, too many months, not sleeping.” He’s sitting in the living room of his Miami home, where he’s been hunkered down during the coronavirus lockdown with girlfriend (and fellow Latin music star) Karol G, who’s been living with him for a year. Despite the lack of sleep, on Zoom he looks clear-eyed. His fingers are jammed with huge diamond rings, his beard impeccably trimmed even in self-quarantine, yet he still appears baby-faced.
Up close, Anuel, 27, is sweet and polite, excitable when he talks about his new music but overall soft-spoken — a jarring contrast to the rowdy, raunchy and trouble-prone persona he’s cultivated over the past seven years in his songs, on social media and in his offstage life, thanks to a nearly three-year stint in prison on a weapons possession charge. For that Anuel, the notion of sleeping till 6 p.m. might evoke visions of debaucherous partying, but that’s not how he rolls. Not anymore.
With Emmanuel — out today (May 29), and titled after his birth name, Emmanuel Gazmey — Anuel is marking a major shift in his art, his personal life and his business. Released on his own label, Real Hasta La Muerte, but also through a distribution/marketing deal with The Orchard and Sony Music Latin — his first partnership with a major — it is one of the most anticipated and impressive Latin urban releases of the year, on par with J Balvin’s Colores and Bad Bunny’s YHLQMDLG. It’s also his first album since his debut, which vaulted to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart in July 2018, a week after Anuel left prison.
Since then, Anuel has become one of the most prominent and inventive faces of the Latin trap movement, notching 14 top 10s and three No. 1s on Hot Latin Songs, selling out arenas, landing high-profile commercial spots for brands like Foot Locker and placing songs on the soundtracks to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Suicide Squad. But unlike Balvin and Bad Bunny — artists whose rise in the industry can be credited to both their creative ambition and amiable, socially conscious personas both on and offstage — Anuel has never seemed too concerned about likability or courting controversy. He’s collaborated with polarizing artists like 6ix9ine and Lil Pump, relishes the explicit content of his own lyrics and can be unfiltered (bordering on offensive to many) on social media
Case in point is a recent Instagram video in which Anuel plays the particularly raunchy “La Bebé” by Secreto (featuring himself and Cardi B on the remix) and tells the camera: “Everyone watches porn, now you can hear it.” After the chorus — “She asks for milk and I give it to her in her mouth” — Karol G sensually pours a glass of milk over his head. When I ask him about the explosive response — over 8 million views and an astounding 521,000 comments — Anuel laughs and looks away, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar: sorry, not sorry.
“I’m trying to spend less time on social media and focus on my stuff. But when that song came out, that’s what came to me. If I was going to post anything, then I was going to break the internet,” he says impishly. If that shock value turns off some listeners — well, that just comes with the territory. “If they think I’m the bad guy, what am I going to do?” says Anuel. “Each of us represents whatever we want, and that’s our burden to carry. I feel my burden is the street [culture]. It’s what I’ll take with me to the very end.”
The success of Emmanuel will test whether Anuel can level up from street provocateur to sophisticated, established star without setting that burden aside. He points to the example of veteran Puerto Rican rapper Tego Calderón, a pioneer of socially conscious rap on the island whose second album was called El Subestimado (The Underdog). “Tego told me: ‘I see you and I see myself when I was starting. Everyone underestimated me,’” he recalls. And Emmanuel certainly looks designed to flout anyone who would dare underestimate Anuel. Its 22 tracks — featuring appearances by Calderón, Enrique Iglesias, Lil Wayne, Karol G and Bad Bunny — include the machismo and malianteo (slang-filled songs about street life) of his debut, but there’s also a rich musicality, introspectiveness and vulnerability completely new for Anuel.
“He’s found within himself other tastes, other motives, and each day he’s a better person, artist and businessman,” Karol G tells me over WhatsApp. “It doesn’t matter what he’s done, where he comes from — he’s the face of a reality that many live, and he represents the dreams of those people who, despite living among demons, try to become angels.” In “Los Hombres no Lloran?” (“Men Don’t Cry?”), for example, Anuel recounts the moment early in their relationship when Karol G walked out. “I had 100,000 problems going on then,” he says ruefully. “I was surrounded by controversy, rap battles, threatening videos, things in the streets. And Karol felt a lot of unnecessary pressure and was really stressed. It reached a point where she said: ‘You do your life, I do mine. I’m not prepared for this lifestyle of yours.’ And she stopped talking to me. I recorded that song precisely there.
“I was a charlatan!” he reflects with a laugh. “But I’ve learned so much. With Karol, I’m calmer, I have more inner peace. I’ve learned to be a better person.” So now, rededicated to both his relationship and his craft, and finally finished with the album that could change his career, is Anuel ready to, well, grow up? The surest sign that he is may have nothing to do with music at all. Though the COVID-19 crisis forced the couple to put their initial plans on hold, “this year, God willing,” says Anuel, “we’ll get married.”
In July 2018, Anuel walked out of a Miami prison. Two years prior, he’d been stopped while riding in a car driven by one of his backup singers, who was on probation. The police found weapons in the vehicle, and although Anuel had no prior arrests, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison for unlawful possession of a firearm. Denied bail and parole, he served nearly his full sentence, spending time between four prisons in Puerto Rico, Atlanta and Miami.
At the time of his arrest, Anuel’s graphic and sometimes violent songs — released independently on his Real Hasta La Muerte label and with no radio support — had gained a fervent underground following in Puerto Rico, making the then-22 year-old rapper one to watch just as the Latin trap movement was beginning to explode. Behind bars, Anuel had to simply watch as friends like Ozuna and Bad Bunny became stars. But his audience was ready and waiting: The day he was set free, Real Hasta La Muerte was released, and a week later it hit No. 1 on Top Latin Albums.
“Real Hasta La Muerte is everything I’ve lived, what I live now and what I will live,” Anuel told Billboard at the time of the album, which was produced by established hitmakers Chris Jeday and Gaby Music, and released through indie digital distributor Glad Empire with support from The Orchard. But the person Anuel truly had to thank for his straight-out-of-jail success was further behind the scenes: his close friend and manager, Frabian Eli.
Just a year older than his client, Eli was the one who’d kept Anuel relevant for those two crucial years, steadily releasing previously recorded material, selling Anuel merchandise, paying the bills (at least as much as possible) with his own gigs as a violinist and ultimately negotiating Anuel’s distribution deal while keeping ownership of his masters. The album, which featured collaborations with Wisin and Ozuna, was all hardcore trap and reggaetón club tracks, and received little radio play. Yet it struck a chord, remaining on Top Latin Albums for 96 weeks thanks in large part to the audience attracted to Anuel’s no-filter attitude on social media. On Nov. 3, 2018, Anuel kicked off a 17-date U.S. tour of arenas and large theaters, produced by indie promoters La Commission and Zamora Live along with Eli. According to La Commission, between November 2018 and December 2019, he grossed over $21 million from 35 shows.
“This is very visionary for everyone involved, including the artist and management,” said David LaPointe of La Commission at the time. “It’s definitely raising the bar for the trap/urban genre.” Looking at the crowd of mostly 18- to 40-year-old men at his 2018 American Airlines arena show in Miami, it was clear that a significant portion of the audience liked its reggaetón less pop-leaning than Ozuna’s or Balvin’s, and related to the man onstage who said things as they popped into his head, with disregard for political correctness or consequence. Offstage, too, demand for Anuel’s trademark baritone and signature “Brrr” was growing, and he didn’t shy away from controversial collaborators: “Bebe,” a feature with 6ix9ine, became his first Hot Latin Songs No. 1.
What Anuel’s legions of fans didn’t know at the time was that his tough exterior didn’t really tell his full story. The streets weren’t Anuel’s birthplace: He’d grown up the youngest son of José Gazmey, a respected bassist and music executive who served as Sony Latin’s national vp A&R, in addition to heading the label’s Puerto Rico office, between 1996 and the early 2000s. Those years marked the height of tropical music’s popularity in Puerto Rico and beyond, a time when Sony’s own Victor Manuelle, Gilberto Santa Rosa and Elvis Crespo were selling millions of albums and their music was leading Billboard’s Latin charts.
For the Gazmeys, music was a way of life, and Anuel felt at ease in the family’s home studio, though entry into the business wasn’t pushed or even expected. “He has an incredible ear, and he didn’t do your typical harmonization,” says José Gazmey. “He would sing and then record a counter harmony, and he knows how to record and mix … [But] you know how it is. The minute he mentioned his last name, people would say, ‘Ah, his dad is the Sony guy.’ It was a stigma.”
As influential as his father’s early success was for young Anuel, his firing from Sony in the early 2000s — amid an overall downturn in music sales during which all Latin labels dramatically scaled back — was equally significant. “I got home and I gave the family the news, and Emmanuel just looked at me and said: ‘But your numbers are solid. You’re the Sony badass!’” recalls Gazmey. Not long after, bank agents came knocking, threatening to repossess their home because Gazmey was two months late on mortgage payments.
“That really shook him,” recalls Gazmey. “From that moment on, he became rebellious.” It was around that time that Anuel, then 13, became friends with Eli, who played classical violin and, like Anuel, hung out on the neighborhood basketball courts after school. He introduced Anuel to Jean Pierre Soto Pascual – aka Yampi — a budding producer who was starting to work with a young Ozuna (and still does).
It was a turbulent time on the island, with rampant gang violence and homicide rates hitting an all-time high in 2011, and Anuel was caught in the thick of the street life around his home. But in the burgeoning trap movement, he found a creative outlet for his rebellion, and he began recording music with Yampi and Eli. One afternoon, while listening to three of Anuel’s tracks in Yampi’s studio, Eli was hit with a realization: “The color of his voice was so different, the melodies were so different, I realized I had to become my friend’s manager,” he recalls. “And I told him so.”
They made a handshake deal that still holds: Everything Anuel earns, Eli gets a percentage (he declines to reveal what it is). In 2015 they launched their own label, Real Hasta La Muerte, with Eli as president and Anuel as CEO. The two balanced each other well — the impetuous Anuel, given to knee-jerk outbursts when he felt slighted, and the more measured and mature Eli, who as a musician-producer himself knew all the players and understood the nuances of Anuel’s creative vision. And despite their differences, the two had one significant thing in common: Anuel’s older brother, a major supporter of his career, had been sent to prison on drug charges. So had Eli’s brother.
By the time Anuel himself was ultimately arrested on April 2, 2016, his music had gained major traction, but with his bail denied, “I thought my career was over,” Anuel told me two years ago. “I never thought the fans would wait like they waited, or support me like they did. When I realized I wasn’t forgotten, I started to write again.”
If he once wanted to prove he could succeed without his father’s last name, with Emmanuel, Anuel finally seems ready to show that he is his father’s son when it comes to musical depth and sophistication. “Beyond the artist, this is someone very intelligent who wants to explore new avenues and new sounds,” says Alex Gallardo, president of Sony Music U.S. Latin. “He wants to get to the biggest number of markets and sounds, versus concentrating only on street trap.”
“People like to say, ‘Ah, he just knows how to rap.’ As if I didn’t know my music,” says Anuel. “People think because I’m crazy, I don’t know anything. My dad played bass with Héctor Lavoe, with Marc Anthony, with Ricky Martin, with people who had nothing to do with reggaetón. I grew up watching him play all kinds of instruments. It’s something I carry in my blood.”
Proving himself creatively is one thing — but proving he can get out of his own way will be another entirely. Even amid all of the success preceding Emmanuel, Anuel has created plenty of headaches for himself and those around him, ranging from easily surmounted Twitter tiffs of little consequence to actions that have provoked serious backlash.
In September 2018, a dis track leaked in which Anuel made homophobic comments, brushed aside the impact of Hurricane Maria and insulted Noris “La Taina” Diaz, a former model who is HIV-positive. Two days later, Anuel issued a lengthy public apology, calling the lyrics “the worst mistake” of his career. But the ensuing uproar led to local promoters canceling his first-ever Puerto Rico concert, and also to a $5 million lawsuit filed by Diaz. (It was dismissed 18 months later).
“They say there’s no such thing as bad press, but I lose sleep over these controversies,” admits Eli. “I also come from the hood. I’m no saint. But if it were up to me, he’d be different in that area. He listens to me, but he does what he wants.”
In April, for instance, when Bad Bunny surprise-released his album Las que no iban a salir, Anuel became a trending topic on Twitter — because fans from both artists’ camps had noticed there weren’t any Anuel features on the set, and speculated there was bad blood between the two. “People just love rumors. They’re always saying things that aren’t true,” says Anuel, shaking his head. “Bad Bunny and I aren’t brothers, but we have a good relationship. We compete. We’ll compete until the day we die, because he says he’s the best, and I say I’m the best. When he releases something big, I have to release something bigger.”
He was acutely aware of the competition as he worked on Emmanuel, which does have two Bad Bunny features. Anuel tweaked and retweaked the album, changing the track list multiple times and delivering it to Sony just three days before its release (and just in time to make the deadline for this year’s Latin Grammy Awards). The high expectations he faces are compounded by Anuel’s unusual new deal with The Orchard and Sony Music Latin. Sony handles all of his sales and marketing efforts, while The Orchard provides global digital and video distribution — all of which Anuel hopes will launch him to a more global level of fame in a way he couldn’t achieve as an independent artist.
“It’s one of a growing number of projects across The Orchard and Sony Music and a great example of our shared vision to provide ongoing artist development and keep artists in the family throughout every stage of their career,” say Brad Navin and Colleen Theis, CEO and COO, respectively, of The Orchard, in a joint statement. As Afo Verde, Sony Music’s chairman/CEO for Latin Iberia explains, Sony works closely with The Orchard, “and we have models that go from pure distribution to artist agreements. Anuel wanted more services from us, and we’re working on a plan to take him as far as we can.” Already, last year, Sony paired Anuel with Shakira for their hit “Me Gusta,” and later facilitated “Fútbol y Rumba,” a collaboration with Enrique Iglesias that’s featured on Emmanuel.
The album makes a surprising first impression, kicking off with “No Llores Mujer,” a cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” featuring Anuel’s father on guitar — the first time he and his son have collaborated on an album — and Eli on violin, plus Travis Barker on drums. Anuel gets more introspective from there. “Mi Vieja” (My Old Lady), for which Anuel recorded all the vocal harmonies, tells the story of his cellmate, whose mother died when he was in jail. “Jangueo,” featuring Tego Calderón, lends not only a stamp of a mentor’s credibility but emotional resonance: Calderón stepped up to pay Anuel’s attorney’s fees when he was in jail. There are party tracks too — “Bandida” featuring up-and-comer Mariah, and “China” with Daddy Yankee, Balvin, Ozuna and Karol G.
Emmanuel could well win Anuel the awards, and industry respect, he’s after. But he’s clear about one thing: becoming Emmanuel doesn’t mean he’ll ever leave Anuel behind. “I’ll always make commercial music,” he says. “But if I just did that, I felt like I was going to lose my essence and I wouldn’t represent my culture, the street, which I’m proud to represent. I want to show that if I was able to do it, who knows who else from the street is able to do it, too. Competition is fierce, but it doesn’t scare me. This album? It will be the best album of the year.”
— BILLBOARD LATIN (LEILA COBO)