Tainy is eloquent and calm, and thinks through every word before constructing sentences that back up his success over two decades. Without a trace of over-confidence, Tainy —whose real name is Marcos Efraín Masis Fernández — has achieved everything he ever dreamed of since he was a teenager making music in Puerto Rico. “Reggaeton was not something we listened to around my house,” he says after talking about the importance the church had in his family. Around then, in his adolesence, he met Nely “El Arma Secreta,” a legendary producer who had already been in reggaeton for some years. “He was my first gateway into production. I’ve always tried to follow in his footsteps,” Tainy says. His closeness with Nely, coupled with an enormous confidence in his skills behind the computer, would later lead him to the studio with Luny Tunes. Lee esta entrevista en español. Nearly 20 years after Tainy met Luny Tunes — the Dominican producer duo that boosted the urban genre into worldwide recognition — and after a long list of global hits, he has managed to surpass his own legacy with the release of his debut solo album, Data. He’s done so without hesitation and with great technical and artistic prowess. In his hotel suite in Mexico City, we talk about the impact and development of his career, the worldwide recognition of his album, and his role as an independent entrepreneur in the music business. Although Tainy started out listening to hip-hop artists, his interest in sound production became his true passion. His influences were marked from the beginning by producers such as Timbaland, The Neptunes, and Dr. Dre. From their work, he understood the role of a producer in hip-hop. At around 14 years old, he began experimenting with basic tools such as Fruity Loops, where he started developing his first ideas. “I felt a connection, and I realized that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he remembers. “At the beginning, I didn’t even have a computer.” Editor’s picks Photograph by Cesar Balcazar The fact he was born in Puerto Rico reflects Tainy’s sound and artistic spectrum, largely due to musical diversity on the island, but also because of his own family home. His father is from Costa Rica, and his mother — with whom he grew up — is Dominican. That’s why merengue, pop ballads, and bachata songs were the main things they listened to at home. “My mom has three sisters, and each has a different taste.” Artists like Juan Luis Guerra, Selena, or Maná played throughout his childhood. “There was a little bit of everything. I feel that’s where music started for me,” Tainy recalls. Over time, his group of friends began listening to more and more genres like hip-hop and reggae. But he couldn’t listen to this type of music at home and had to listen to whatever his neighbors played out loud. Don Chezina, Sir Speedy, or Alberto Stylee were booming in his neighborhood and ended up being his first influences. However, the first to catch his attention towards the urban genre was the rapper Vico C. Vico C had a positive message and not very explicit lyrics that Tainy could listen to at home. At the same time, a wave of American rap was arriving on the island. Artists like Eminem influenced him aesthetically and sonically. Working with Nely he got to know in-depth what it was like to produce tracks for hip hop and reggaeton songs. “He would ask me to make adjustments. ‘Change this,’ ‘This is out of tune,’ ‘This is not in time,’ ‘This is clashing with this frequency.'” While learning from him, Tainy tried to impress him with his tracks, so every Sunday, he would bring his music to church on a USB for Nely to listen. In a stroke of good luck and talent, the producer liked one of the tracks. “That’s how the story and my career begin.” The following week, he met Luny Tunes, and the duo asked him to create an instrumental right in front of them. “I created something but I was nervous as hell,” he recalls. They immediately decided to sign him. Related Being able to bring all those elements together was key to defining his sound and catching the attention of the big artists who were hanging around the studio. At the time, it was revolutionary, and Tainy didn’t want to stop impressing himself. It’s most likely that his success has something to do with the genuine respect he feels for the art and how it can be the core of pop. Tainy eventually earned the trust of artists like Wisin y Yandel and Hector el Father, who embraced him as the producer of their biggest albums, and that’s when Tainy began his path into the Spanish-language music industry. In 2004, songs like “Pam Pam,” by Wisin y Yandel and “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee made reggaeton, for the first time a hit on the pop music charts throughout Latin America, and the genre began it’s ascent around the world. “Little by little, the phenomenon was growing and learning, not only the artists but us, the producers,” Tainy says. The urban genre assumed the use of samples, and producers like Tainy brought avant-garde and sounds from other genres, which had not yet been mixed with classic dembow and reggaeton. Photograph by Cesar Balcazar The main factors of success at the beginning of the century have to do with the various characteristics of the pioneers in the genre; Artists like Don Omar, Tego Caldron, and Daddy Yankee were all different from each other, however, the breaking point may have to do with the robustness of the production that Luny Tunes, and later Tainy injected into the genre. Until then, reggaeton was basically seen as music for clubs due to its rhythmic and catchy nature, but with songs like “Noche de Burial,” which also featured the collaboration of several artists, it was telling the world that it was consolidating itself as a genre. Tainy would have a prominent future. For Tainy, connecting and starting to work with Luny Tunes was a turning point and departure in his career. “We had a keyboard, the Yamaha Motif, and it was iconic, because he defined the sound of Luny Tunes.” However, they needed to find their own identity. Tainy began experimenting with synthesizers and pop atmospheres, bringing avant-garde and futuristic sounds to the table for that time. “I always liked that contrast, thinking about sounds that made me feel like it was a movie from the future,” he says, and it is consistent with what he has been doing in the music industry for the last 20 years. “I always liked that contrast between classic and new sounds, seeing how I can create some different sound or feeling,” he adds. At that point, the vision of Gustavo López and Machete Music, seeking to take the genre to the whole world, ended up being a safe bet. Still, they needed to reach wider audiences and soon, they’d make a mark in the U.S. TAINY IS IN the Fillmore Theater dressing room, hours before his live performance at the Rolling Stone en Español Awards. He is accompanied by Álvaro Díaz, one of the most promising artists on the scene, and an entourage of five people. His role as a producer has been transformed over two decades: “Before, my job was only to deliver a CD with five instrumentals, and if they chose one, then great, but that’s it.” He had little opinion or intervention in the development of a song. “I didn’t feel like a real producer.” His goal was to find the role of the producer who could direct an entire musical project from different fronts, and he found it little by little. “Now it’s about having a creative exchange. I feel that that is the most important thing, that is the true success of a song,” he says. And it makes sense when a song that transcends is connected in every element and detail so that it can be different from the others. Photograph by Cesar Balcazar As he matured in his process and gained experience as a producer, he recalls that he always wanted to make projects that he could direct in their entirety. It was something he learned from
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