Rising Reggeaton Star Jhay Cortez Shares Inpirations Behind His Latest Album “Timelezz” and Plan For the Future

On a Zoom the day before I asked him about the new record and its amalgam of genre smashing tracks: “I love salsa … reggae and Skrillex’ latest, “Butterflies”– reggaetón is the only genre where you can do everything and where everything is happening. It’s become a universal and global genre, and for something to truly be global it’s got to have a bit of everything.”

Then it’s very fitting that his show tonight is at the United Palace theatre, described by the New York Times as designed in the “Byzantine-Romanesque-Indo- Hindu-Sino-Moorish-Persian-Eclectic-Rococo-Deco” style. Perfect. Amid ornate gold detailing and statues of bodhisattvas, two DJs hype up the crowd with Latin trap and the Jamaican bounce known as dem- bow. People are feeling it to the tune of hits like Daddy Yankee’s “Lo Que Pasó, Pasó”, Tego Calderón’s classic “Pa’ Que Retozen”, El Alfa’s newer track “La Mamá de la Mamá”, and Jowell & Randy’s aptly-named “Se Acabó La Cuarentena” [Quarantine is Over]. But it’s the Bad Bunny x Jowell & Randy x Ñengo Flow hit “Safaera” that sets the place on fire as throngs of people scramble to the dance floor to answer the DJ asking:

“¿Quién vino a perrear hoy?”

[“Who’s ready to dance reggaetón?”]
An uproarious choir of voices scream that they are, in fact, very ready. Not long after, the lights go down and the room goes red to welcome the star of the show. Jhay finally appears, face covered in a bala- clava crowned with horns as he launches into “Kobe En LA 2.0”, a bravado-heavy, six-minute, experimental, 2.0 reimagining that serves as Timelezz’s intense pen- ultimate track. “It’s a song that’s super special to me because I express my faceted personality,” he says. “I like dark things, dark beats…I’m fairly dark myself, darks like people are saying these days” he says, referring to the goth-ish aesthetic of a subgenre called reggaetón darks and typified by groups like Friolento.

Born Jesús Nieves Cortez, Jhay Cortez is an art- ist listening to all kinds of musical bents and finding his own truth in the postmodern alchemy of cross- genre work. From his #1 dance smash, “Dákiti” with Bad Bunny to his feat. on alt-siren Kali Uchis’ sensual alt-popetón track “la luz(Fin)” to recording his own album between Puerto Rico, Miami and Los Angeles, this is a musician with a producer’s ear, borrowing, mix- ing and reinventing.

The new album is a journey that begins with airy synths on “Dilema” and moves onto a variety of club- ready hits pulsating with a classic reggaetón beat as on “Los Rompediskoteca” and “Christian Dior.” And also trap on “Nos Matamos”, and his collab with Arcangel on “Los Bandoleros”, then further genre-bending assists from EDM household name Skrillex— “a dream come true,” Cortez confides. Timelezz also includes Puerto Rican indietronica duo Buscabulla. This risky genre roulette seems to give the public exactly what they want as Timelezz debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums Chart.

He hasn’t stumbled onto this success without study. Before 2019 put him on the map with his global smash “No Me Conoce” (remixed by Bad Bunny and J. Balvin) he was producing and writing for other reggaetón art- ists. He’s proudly served on behind-the-scenes work with titans like Yandel and Tito El Bambino — the inno- vator behind the Hindi-Spanish bhangratón (!) hit “Flow Natural” that lit up dance floors around the world.