Get Ready for Ricky Latin pop's hot new star has gone from Menudo to mainstream, with a stop at a soap. What's not to like? BY CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY
Listening to a Ricky Martin CD is like buying a soda at the movies. You ask for the small, but when the guy behind the counter says, "Hey, the medium is only a quarter more," you realize how thirsty you are. So you go for it. Then the guy says, "How about the jumbo?" and you keep trading up until you end up with a vat of soda large enough to have an undertow. That drink is Ricky Martin. He lures you with his charisma, his outsize energy, his obvious love of performing, and soon enough the San Juan rhythms are pumping, his voice is pleading, the big emotions are coming at you and, oops, you've got a big ole cup of Ricky in your hands. Drink up.
If a former Mouseketeer, Britney Spears, can land a No. 1 CD, the time is probably just about right for Martin, a former member of the Latin teen group Menudo, to burst onto the national stage. At 27, he is already a major star in Latin America. He first caught the eye of English-speaking U.S. audiences with his joyous, hip-swiveling, eye-catchingly over-the-top performance at the Grammy Awards last February. Now, on May 11, the Latin pop star is set to release his first English-language album, Ricky Martin (C2Records/Columbia). And he is raring to hit mainstream stardom. "Everything I do, I do when I'm ready," Martin says. "So now is the moment."
Enrique Martin Morales was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1971. In 1984, at 12, he joined the ever changing ranks of the boy group Menudo. "Two things can happen when you join a group like Menudo," says Robi Rosa, a fellow Menudo alum, who co-wrote Martin's current hit single, Livin' la Vida Loca. "You can get all messed up, or you can pay attention and learn from it. We learned a lot. For Ricky and me, the studio is like home now."
Martin soon embarked on a solo singing career, releasing a series of bubbly Spanish-language albums that made full use of his good looks. (The back cover of his 1991 album has him oh-so casually reclining in a wet ribbed tank top.) In 1994 Martin got a big break and landed a regular role on General Hospital. His part on the ABC soap was not a stretch--he played Miguel Morez, a singer from Puerto Rico. Wendy Riche, General Hospital's executive producer, created the role after meeting with him just once. She was struck by his drive and determination to succeed. Says Riche: "He lives to perform."
You can feel it. Ricky is not a great CD, but it is energetic, forceful and eager to please. Martin works furiously to satisfy, to charm, to get feet moving, to keep hearts racing. This is an unabashed pop record, but it's saved by its Latin soul. It's charged with peppy horns and churning percussion and lyrics that veer from English to Spanish and back again. Martin's singing talents are limited--his voice lacks power and depth--but he is not out simply to vocalize, he's out to entertain. On Shake Your Bon-Bon, he parties hard; on She's All I Ever Had, he delivers a power ballad with impressively aggressive sincerity. One of the CD's best cuts is Be Careful (Cuidado con Mi Corazon), a duet with Madonna. It's a compelling pairing: we feel the love, but it is not between Martin and his duet partner; it's a shared passion for superstardom, from a woman who has attained it and an up-and-comer who wants it.
This is a hot summer for Latin pop. Due out later this season are CDs by Hollywood star turned singer Jennifer Lopez, Colombian rocker Shakira and Puerto Rican salsa star Marc Anthony, a man who is one of the most thrilling vocalists in any language and who will now get the chance to share his talents with a larger audience. Anthony and Lopez have already recorded an enchanting duet that will appear on both their CDs; it would also be exciting to hear him pair up with an established vocal star, someone like, say, Lauryn Hill.
In the meantime, Martin is on the fast track. Tom Calderone, senior v.p. for music and talent at MTV, says Martin's video Livin' la Vida Loca is one of the channel's five most requested clips. Saturday Night Live has booked him for a performance this weekend. "I want to do this forever," says Martin. "I want to be respected in the States in 20 years. So the first impression is very important." Indeed. The music Martin makes is the first taste of a more diverse, more flavorful America that grooves less to rock than to hip-hop and Latin pop. Want a sip? How about a jumbo?
--WITH REPORTING BY AUTUMN DE LEON/NEW YORK COPYRIGHT © 1999 TIME INC. NEW MEDIA
For a Latino pop sensation, Ricky Martin looks a lot like a preppy Ralph Lauren model. And his current smash single, the pulsing, horn-driven "Livin' La Vida Loca," might as well have been penned by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones after a boozy night in Juarez. But to be a big thing in pop music, you've got to be a new, fresh big thing. So next week, when Martin's first English-language album, "Ricky Martin," fulfills expectations and becomes the biggest debut seller of 1999, it'll be official: The Latino invasion has arrived.
"Sony gets the credit for a lot of this," says TIME entertainment correspondent David Thigpen. "They did a great job of marketing, and they had the muscle to get the radio stations playing the single." Of course, Sony's checkbook didn't climb onstage for that Elvis-the-Pelvis-on-speed star turn at the Grammys in March, which had Rosie O'Donnell talking about his "tushy" and a whole lot of viewers -- even in white-as-snow Salt Lake City -- emptying the shelves of Martin's other work. (After cutting his teeth in teenybopper factory Menudo, Martin recorded a handful of Spanish-language albums in Purto Rico.) Now he's a star, and the Latino music bandwagon, about to deliver albums from Colombian rocker Shakira, Puerto Rican salsa star Marc Anthony and booty-blessed actress Jennifer Lopez, will be rolling all summer.
Latino music -- or the Latin-ska-Ameripop fusion that's passing for it -- may well be here to stay. Latinos are the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S., and as a rule, they tend not to complain too loudly when one of their own crosses over. And as the Salt Lake City bin-clearings demonstrate, Anglos are ready too (Thigpen estimates that only half of the screaming teens at Martin's New York City record signing last week were Latino). Will Martin be in it for the long haul? Thigpen dares to doubt it. "Pop sensations tend not to be around too long, especially ones that blow up at this magnitude," he says. But he is sure that for at least a turn or two of pop music's wheel of fortune, Martin will be on top of el mundo. "His voice isn't great. But he's got the looks, he's got the energy, and he's got the backing," he says. "And he's not too Latin." When the road to superstardom runs through Utah, that always helps.
Spicing The Mix Latin pop prepares to take on America BY DAVID E. THIGPEN
A funny thing happened last week in Salt Lake City, Utah. After Ricky Martin's electrifying rendition of La Copa de la Vida performed the musical equivalent of CPR on a listless Grammy Awards telecast in Los Angeles, fans descended on Salt Lake's record stores and picked them clean of the Latin singer's albums. Runs on his albums were reported in L.A. and Miami too, but none was more surprising than the one in Salt Lake, a town better known for its allegiance to the Osmond Brothers than its enthusiasm for Latin pop. Grammy host Rosie O'Donnell summed up what a lot of English-speaking viewers must have been feeling about Martin when she declared, "I never heard of him before tonight, but I'm enjoying him so-o-o much."
Martin's house-wrecking performance may be a turning point not just for him but for all Latin pop in 1999. That's the hope, anyway, of a handful of U.S. record executives who are betting big that a pack of new Latin music stars can cross over and tap the vast English-speaking market. "I have no crystal ball, but my gut tells me that Latin music can be the next big reservoir of talent for mainstream superstars," says Sony Music chief Tommy Mottola, whose company is spending millions hiring market-savvy producers like Puff Daddy and David Foster to help Latin pop join country and hip-hop in the American mainstream.
Although Gloria Estefan crossed over in the late '80s, Latin pop remains foreign to most American listeners. Between now and August, Sony hopes to change that with four major releases--English-language debuts by Puerto Rican-born Martin, East Harlem salsa and stage star Marc Anthony, Bronx native and Hollywood star Jennifer Lopez and the Colombian vocal powerhouse Shakira.
Mottola has the wind at his back. Culturally and demographically, the Latin presence in the U.S. is being felt now as never before. Top-40 radio stations in New York City and Miami are increasingly eager to play Martin along with Tupac and Lauryn Hill, not to mention the unavoidable 1995 hit Macarena. What's more, Latin-genre record sales grew a healthy 21% last year. "Lots of different cultures are accepting Latin music," says Julio Vergara, program director of wskq, New York's top Spanish-language radio station.
Some stars may find the culture gap difficult to bridge, but others should be able to cross over easily. Lopez, already well known to English-speaking audiences as an actress, made a splash in the film and music worlds in 1997 with her persuasive portrayal of Selena. An early listen to her yet untitled June album shows she has an inviting, sultry voice, with plenty of poise. Produced by Puff Daddy, among others, the CD hedges its bets by blending disco-influenced R. and B. with a traditional Spanish flavor. "It's a mix of urban and Latin influences," says Lopez, "stuff that makes me dance."
The most potent singer of this bunch is Marc Anthony, who describes his August album as "not salsa, not dance, just pop." Anthony, who is said to be planning a duet with Madonna, will have to labor a little harder to introduce himself to English-speaking audiences, despite his fine work on Broadway in The Capeman and several small film roles. "When I go into stores in Times Square and ask for my album, they say it's in the back, in the international section," Anthony complains. "I recorded it on 47th Street! How can you get more local than that?"
Martin will shore up his gains with a new CD in May. Still glowing from his Grammy-night coup, he bubbled, "To see Will Smith doing the jiggy with my song! It's overwhelming." His current album, the throbbing Vuelve, catapulted back onto the pop charts this week.
Although she's still unknown in the U.S., Shakira says her summer album will "demonstrate to the rest of the world that Latin people also can make good pop and good rock." Her captivating looks should play well on MTV, and her album is being produced by the godfather of Latin pop, Emilio Estefan. Of course, all the producing and marketing in the world won't carry a bad record across the street. Latin pop will do fine in the English market just so long as its producers don't turn the music's soulfulness and extravagant passion--two things that make it different, and most worth listening to--into just more slick pop product.
--WITH REPORTING BY AUTUMN DE LEON/NEW YORK COPYRIGHT © 1999 TIME INC. NEW MEDIA
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