Interview With Piso 21 on New Single With Maluma and New Album

Pablo Mejía (AKA Pablito), David Lorduy Hernández (AKA Lorduy), and Juan David Huerta (AKA el profe) of Piso 21 are behind a tour bus parked exterior the Bogotá studios the place El Issue X, the Colombian version of the X Issue, is being filmed.

All the time trendy, Pablito is sporting a low blond buzz minimize paired with black apparel and a blue facemask dangling from his ear. A heart-shaped tattoo with “Piso 21” within the middle peeks out from his proper hand, the place he is holding his cellphone. Simply as swaggy, Lourdy and el profe look as if they only got here out of a reggaeton music video sporting Adidas, fedoras, and sun shades.

On this Thursday afternoon, the Colombian pop group is making time for press between shoots for the truth present, for which the quartet is serving as judges. The group’s fourth member, David Escobar (AKA Dim), couldn’t make it to this interview owing to scheduling conflicts.

“Our expertise on X Issue has been superior. We’ve realized rather a lot from these artists, and so they realized rather a lot from us,” Lourdy says over Zoom. “We attempt to implement a few of the groundwork we’ve utilized in our careers in order that they’ve some kind of instruments to work with.”

It has been about 13 years since Piso 21 burst onto the scene with schmaltzy teenage love songs like “Correr el Riesgo” and “Déjame.” Since then, the group has labored with Maluma, Zion & Lennox, Black Eyed Peas, and Christian Nodal.

With every of these collaborations, the blokes have pushed the envelope on the general public’s notion of what a boy band ought to look and sound like, and most lately, they’ve taken the urban-pop route.

When the group began out, Piso 21’s route was set by label executives who had been searching for a surefire hit.

“I believe our maturity has been infamous. We began as youngsters and the whole lot from our sound to our type has modified,” Pablito says. “At first it felt like our music was simply made up of various references, and it wasn’t our personal sound. After we first began, the music business wasn’t signing anybody, and other people had been closely stealing music by way of piracy. However there was nonetheless a strategy to maintain going as a result of there have been reveals we may play at.”

After all of the rising pains of being novices, Pablito looks like Latin music has gone by way of an enormous seismic shift because the group’s early days.

“I really feel just like the Latin music scene is at its greatest than it ever has been,” he ventures. “It’s such a particular second that we’re residing in for Latin music in Spanish. And we’re out right here taking up to deliver Latin music to the entire world.”

For Piso 21, that takeover contains having the ability to cross over into singing in English and collaborate with artists just like the Weeknd.

Till then, the hits the blokes are making in Spanish suffice. There’s the newest single with Maluma, “Mas de la Una,” a love story gone unsuitable. It’s relatable, inevitable, and concurrently catchy.

“It’s like whenever you actually like an individual, and also you’ve damaged their coronary heart, and also you name them after 1 a.m., and so they don’t reply,” Lourdy explains.

“All of us have gone by way of that,” Pablito provides.

Subsequent 12 months, Piso 21 is trying ahead to releasing a brand new album, En los Tiempos del Perrio, which the blokes hope to drop in the course of the first quarter. They’re fairly optimistic in regards to the album cycle happening as deliberate.

“We’re additionally hoping for plenty of vaccines, good well being, numerous music and live shows,” el profe says. “And, you already know, it’s 2021, and everyone knows it’s going to be Piso 21’s 12 months.”