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“For my dad it wasn’t about genres it was about creating moods,” said Alejandro. His father, Raúl Ocasio, a land surveyor by trade, is also a skilled guitar player from Brooklyn he raised his children on Elvis Presley and James Brown records, along with those of the salsa supergroup Fania All-Stars. Alejandro’s mom, a choir singer and now retired government administrator, works on occasion as his Puerto Rico-based assistant. I like feeling responsible.”Ĭovering the issues, politics, culture and lifestyle of the Latino community in San Diego, the border region, California and beyond.īorn Raúl Alejandro Ocasio Ruiz, he was raised just east of San Juan, in the municipality of Carolina. I want my family to be taken care of, and that makes me work harder. “My people motivate me,” he said of his fellow boricuas. To sell out the “Choli” once is no small feat to any Puerto Rican, but to do it four times begged multiple rounds of this chant across the stadium: “ ¡Yo soy boricua, pa’ qué tu lo sepas!” (“I’m Puerto Rican, so that you know!”) Or perhaps they were too caught up in Alejandro’s adrenalized performance: nearly three hours of strutting, sprinting and seductively body rolling across the stage, his tattooed physique glistening with sweat, as he led a mixed-gender dance crew through some steamy perreo - a provocative dance and a national pastime. Perhaps it was out of respect for his mother, María Ruiz, who stood excitedly in the front row. (The official Los Angeles Times count: two bras and a thong.) On Alejandro’s opening night at the Coliseo, few women were so brazen as to toss their intimates onstage. “People were pulling bras off their bodies!” “I’ll take them to the laundry first,” he assured me. Some are adorned with cutesy hearts scrawled in Sharpie pen others include names, phone numbers and unquotable messages.īy year’s end, he vows to repurpose their offerings into an art installation of sorts. Five months later, his crew claims to have amassed a department store’s worth of undergarments over the course of his arena tour.
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The frenzy started after a womanflung a white cotton bra at Alejandro during a July show in Elizabeth, N.J. Clad in a black Burberry tee and striped trousers, he perused a box of doughnuts in the green room and explained why he renamed his globetrotting jaunt “The Bra and Panties Tour.”
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I met Alejandro last month in his hometown of San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he sold out four consecutive nights at the city’s Coliseo de Puerto Rico, which seats 18,500. and gave Alejandro permission to live out his ‘70s roller-boogie dreams in the accompanying music video.Īfter the long pandemic, he said, his rationale was simple: “There aren’t enough artists dancing in the reggaeton world or making R&B music in Spanish. 3 on the Billboard Global 200 chart, went six times platinum in the U.S. But with its crisp, disco-revival beat, “Todo De Ti” rocketed to No. A plug-and-play trap beat was too ambient.Īlejandro needed something with more verve, more sparkle - perhaps a classic sound he first discovered on vinyl, collecting dust in a crate somewhere inside his father’s den.
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It was then that 28-year-old Rauw Alejandro knew the kind of beat he needed for his song “Todo De Ti,” or “Everything About You.” Dembow, the reggaeton riddim that’s become a staple of the Latin pop charts, was too lax. It started with a computerized bassline on his laptop.