Eladio Carrión, the monarch of the trap corner

Eladio Carrión could be the name of a bolero singer perfectly. But it is that of one of the most brilliant stars of the trap. One of the men of the year since he launched in January ‘Monarca’, one of the best albums of 2021, which has even earned him a nomination for the next Latin Grammys (in the section of best urban music album). Not happy with that, the one from Puerto Rico (26 years old) will close the year with another album, ‘Sen2 Kbrn Volume 1’, released in July. A guy, by the way, was born in Kansas City (USA) because his father, a military man, was stationed there and who at the age of 11 returned to his homeland.

His music is full of ingredients from his short life in the United States.: “My base is good rap. For my brothers, when I was six years old I listened to Eminem, 50 Cent, 2Pac …”. American culture, with sports at the center, is in their songs: “It helps to connect with people. Sport, in addition to music, is one of the most universal languages ​​there is.”

Eladio Carrión tells it one noon in Barcelona in the middle of a small work tour. His route through Spain has led him to enter a studio with Rels B, Delarue, Morad and Beny Jr, for example. In Barcelona, ​​a city to which he confesses a great love, it was the last dance of his previous life, when he was going to be a professional swimmer. The Catalan capital was the scene of its last international competition in 2013. Carrión went in a few years from the military discipline of this sport to the perfectly disordered life of a successful artist: now he goes to sleep when he used to get up to go to train. “It was quite a drastic change, but at the same time I didn’t notice it much because maybe I’m in the studio until 4 am, and for me that’s like training,” he says.

He ended up in the pool because his parents wanted little Eladio – “hyperactive, restless” – to come home without batteries.. “I am very competitive. If there is something that bothered me in group sports it was training a lot so that in the end I would lose because of someone else. I liked it because it was an individual sport, it depended on my efforts to give results. I felt that I had more control of my success, “he says. “It gave me the basis for everything, to be disciplined, persevering …”, he adds. Also marijuana, very present in his work and figure, says that it helps him build his music: “My mind is always fast and helps me settle down, calms my mind, relaxes me.”

He fell out of love with swimming when he had to start making a living. “You have to be Michael Phelps to earn a few bucks!” He exclaims. From there he was linking jobs in hospitality or shops. It was not easy to get started until we could get to the point where it is today (almost 7 million listeners on Spotify, for example). He tells it – “100% real” – in the song ‘Look at me’: “In a lot of ‘furniture’ I slept; with the windows down in the car”. “Whoever tells you that making a living from music is easy lies to you. I have slept on many sofas, in the car in front of the studio … I had nowhere to go, where to stay, I was very hungry, I had my clothes in garbage bags … “, he says. He seems sincere now when he says that he values ​​very much the fact of “having lost a certain fear of knowing where I am going to have my next meal or where I am going to stay.”

And, in the middle of all this, Carrión triumphed in the extinct social network of short videos Vine by making comic sketches. “It gave me an understanding of the general taste of people. There is what you think is funny and what people think is funny. And it’s about finding a middle ground. In music it’s the same,” he says.

The microphone as a psychologist

The song ‘Kemba Walker’ (2019), with Bad Bunny, was for Eladio Carrión an important springboard in terms of popularity. By the way, in a way he is also a key figure in the Bad Rabbit’s career, as he showed his music when he was a stranger to his current manager, Noah Assad, head of Rimas Entertainment. And from there to number one in the world for Bad Bunny. “The Americans want to do songs with us, before it was the other way around,” says Carrión.

Coming from Puerto Rico, Carrión had it easy joining the reggaeton bandwagon, but he does trap, non-negotiable, although sometimes he also makes his first steps in the genre of golden eggs. “I have my corner, 100%. I have never made music thinking of one. I could do numbers, but I like to do what I get. People have accepted me. We have been giving it so that the public understands that this is my corner. I’m going to do my reggaetons, but this corner is mine, “he proclaims.

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“En ‘Sauce Boyz 2’ [próximo álbum] there are going to be commercial things, a couple of reggaetons, but in my own way, “he announces. “In reggaeton you can’t get into so many feelings because people listen to it more to be partying. Trap makes it easier for me to tell stories”, Add. Carrión raps taking everything ahead. Try that in each ‘bar’, each verse, there is a ‘punchline’, a direct blow to the chin. “I am one of the few artists who is giving much importance to this,” he considers. A way to let off steam that has made a fortune. “The microphone is my psychologist,” he sums up.