Class of the 2000s: The Other Stars Inside the Latin Music Explosion

After Gloria Estefan's and Ricky Martin's music set the world on fire, Shakira, Marc Anthony, Enrique Iglesias and other Latin artists joined the crossover party.

When Ricky Martin set the stage on fire during the 1999 GRAMMY Awards held at LA’s Shrine Auditorium, it was hard to imagine how much his performance would change the perception of Latin music around the world. The aftermath of that show not only made him a worldwide superstar, it marked the beginning of the phenomenon that became known as the Latin Explosion in the U.S. music industry, which saw other Spanish-speaking artists like him also singing in English.

“Ricky Martin’s success [that night] at the GRAMMYs didn’t surprise me at all, because he is amazingly talented, and it was Emilio [Estefan] who convinced Mike Green, the organization’s leader at the time, to include Ricky in the show,” says Cuban singer-songwriter Gloria Estefan. “Emilio had been working really hard to create a GRAMMY show that would celebrate Latin music the way it deserved and the reaction to Ricky's [performance] helped give the Anglo world a chance to see the power of our music and of the unrivalled Ricky Martin. Emilio and I have always believed in what Latin music can achieve, and we’ve worked all our lives to help and promote other Latin artists.”

Shortly after his stellar performance, Ricky launched his first album in English, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and broke sales records. The first cut on that album, “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks running.

Ricky’s path to stardom served as inspiration to other Latin artists who were ready to take their own big leaps. “In my book Decoding ‘Despacito’: An Oral History of Latin Music, I analyze the buildup toward what’s now known as the Latin Explosion. There was an entire movement, with artists like Elvis Crespo, Son by Four and others singing in English and Spanish. But the real trigger was Ricky Martin singing ‘La copa de la vida’ at the 1999 GRAMMYs. That was a watershed event, one that marked a ‘before’ and an ‘after,’” says Leila Cobo, Billboard's chief content officer for Latin/Espa?ol and a leading authority on Latin music.

“That was when the Latin Explosion was defined as a movement of Latino artists, many of them born outside the U.S., who became hugely popular in the U.S. mainstream by singing in English. Those artists —Ricky, Shakira, Marc, Enrique Iglesias—were already major stars in the Spanish-language markets", she says. "But people were convinced that they could reach the same levels of success in English and other languages. It was really the so-called Latin Explosion that unleashed the global movement that we’re seeing today.”

The movement also included artists like Marc Anthony, Jennifer López and, to some extent, Christina Aguilera, who were born in the U.S. Many of these artists signed with Sony Music, often credited for creating the crossover phenomenon, which at the time was an essential step for Latin artists looking to top English-language charts.

“I would venture to say that without Sony, the Latin Explosion would never have happened. Sony [and then CEO] Tommy [Mottola] bet big on Latino artists, giving them the same budgets that they would have allotted to a global star who sang in English and giving them as much exposure as possible,” Cobo explains. “[Mottola] insisted that Ricky be given a place [at the GRAMMYs] even though the show’s producers didn’t want this singer 'that nobody knew'. And history has proven just the opposite: Ricky’s show that night has often been described as the most career-changing performance in GRAMMY history. In that case, it was also the fuse that detonated a movement.”

Shakira was among the artists who followed in Martin’s footsteps. The 1995 launch of her album Pies descalzos had already catapulted her to stardom across Latin America, followed in 1998 by her huge hit ?Dónde están los ladrones? But it wasn’t until 2001 and Laundry Service —her first album in English— that the artist from Barranquilla, Colombia, would make the leap into the U.S. market.

Her single “Whenever, Wherever” hit number six on the Billboard Top 10 and she solidified her position in the global market by performing “Hips Don’t Lie” with Wyclef Jean at the 49th GRAMMY Awards in 2007. Since then, the Colombian singer has been riding the wave, even during the years when she kept a lower professional profile after moving to Barcelona and having two kids with her ex, Gerard Piqué. Her breakup with the former soccer player —the subject of her 2023 collaboration with producer Bizarrap— marked her comeback with another monster hit.

An international sensation, Enrique Iglesias had also hit the big time singing in Spanish after starting his career in the mid-90s. In November 1999, the Spaniard dropped his first English-language album —joining a growing avalanche of Latin artists flooding the market— which included his global hit “Bailamos.” Actor Will Smith included the song in the soundtrack of his movie Wild Wild West, and Iglesias wound up performing at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2000 alongside Phil Collins and Toni Braxton. His English-language hits also kept coming: “Rhythm Divine,” “Not In Love,” “Heartbeat,” “Be With You,” “Could I Have This Kiss Forever?” and “Hero," just to mention a few.

Nuyorican singer Marc Anthony was also enjoying a prolific and successful salsa career when the Latin explosion caught up with him in the eventful 1999. That year, he launched his first English-language album, which included singles like “I Need to Know” and “You Sang to Me.” He would release another English-language album a few years later, but most of his post-boom career has been rooted in Spanish. In fact, the singer has always rejected the crossover concept. “It’s become the status quo, ‘Oh, so you’re a crossover.’ From where? I was born at 102nd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan, New York City,” he said during a 2015 interview on NBC’s Today Show. On another occasion, he said, “I am neither a salsa singer who wants to sing in English nor an American who wants to sing in Spanish.”

In a CNN interview, he stressed his deep love for salsa. “My approach to salsa is humble, and I challenge anybody to show that I’m faking it,” he said. “As I was raised in New York in the '70s and '80s, I have many musical influences. And I've been tapping into the Latin influences over the past few years. But these other influences still live in me, and it's something that I've always wanted to do. I always go back to these sounds. But they're such a part of me that I don't see them as going back to anything or going to something or getting away from something... none of that. It's all born in the same place, and I am both.”

Unlike the man she would marry and would become the father of her children, Jennifer López didn't technically “cross over.” She was already a known entity after portraying the slain Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla in 1997's Selena, a performance that helped her identify deeply with her Latin roots and the Hispanic community, she has said. Her debut album, On the 6, also came out in that eventful year of 1999, with hits like “If You Had My Love” and “Waiting for Tonight.” It also included her first single in Spanish, “No me ames,” a duet with Marc Anthony. The rest is history.

“Even though these artists sang in English in their crossovers, their natural market and their essence was Latino and in Spanish,” says Cobo. “They normalized the Latin presence in music and pop culture. Even today, everybody still recognizes the names of Shakira, Marc [Anthony], Enrique [Iglesias and many others]. Until those artists came along, we were really pretty much invisible to the U.S. mainstream. We didn’t exist, because the language barrier was huge.”

The 1999 Latin Explosion didn’t just fall from the sky, as Gloria and Emilio Estefan know only too well. They did their own crossover in the '80s, knocking down barriers and obstacles along their way to success with their band, Miami Sound Machine. “When I joined the group Miami Latin Boys, they were only doing classic Cuban dance music and a few boleros,” Gloria recalls. “With my entry into the group, Emilio saw the possibility of doing pop music in English, which I was already singing, and of [doing] disco, the new genre that was just getting started. I was already very familiar with all the music they were doing because I would sing those [Cuban] classics to my grandmother. Our idea was always to make music in both languages because that was our reality, our experience. The idea was very new at the time, but we stood our ground. [In fact], the first albums we recorded had songs in both languages. Our first hit, 'Renacer,’ was in Spanish, and when we signed with CBS Discos, they asked us to focus on doing records in Spanish. We agreed only as long as they would put in the contract that we could record in English someday.”

According to Estefan and other artists at the time, there was always a resistance to the idea of a Latin group making it big by singing in English. “But we had the proof that what we wanted to do would work because of the success we were having with our live performances," she says. "We had to find a way to convince the people in charge at the record company to let us do what we knew was going to work.”

As the Cuban superstar sees it, this obstacle remains in place for any artist who wants to do something outside the current established norms in music. “If you don't bring something fresh and different —and all you hear are voices screaming, ‘This is never going to work,'— you fall into the trap of repeating what others have done before. What really has changed, because of digital technology, is the worldwide acceptance of music in other languages. Like everything, the global success of artists like Bad Bunny has proven to the music industry that language doesn’t matter. Audiences are ready for new things.”

Were the U.S. and the world ready to accept Latin artists making the big leap back then? “The world has always been ready for diverse music", she says. "We saw that when we won the Grand Prize at the Tokyo Music Festival in 1985 for ‘Conga.’ Wherever we went in Europe or Asia, Latin music was accepted and loved. Unfortunately, the ‘business’ part of music has erected barriers where there shouldn’t be any and opts for things that are ‘proven’ or accepted instead of something fresh. Radio stations paid more attention to advertisers than to the artists who were trying to create their own style and do innovative things.”

Cobo largely agrees with the Cuban singer. “I do think there was demand from a growing Hispanic population. But I think that as these artists came on the market, a lot of people discovered them for the first time," she says. "The reality was a little bit of both. But [of course] I don’t think there was the kind of demand in the market that there is now.”

One undeniable legacy of the Latin wave at the beginning of this century was the creation of the Latin GRAMMY Awards, held for the first time on Sept. 13, 2000 at LA’s Staples Center. It was the first primetime program that was mostly in Spanish to be broadcast by a U.S. English-language network, CBS. Since 2005, Univision has broadcast the awards in the U.S.

“The future of the industry is changing by the minute. We’ve seen the focus change from radio to streaming, and with the emergence of artificial intelligence, endless possibilities and complications have been created,” says Estefan reflecting on the future of Latin music, which, like the entire industry, has undergone a huge transformation as CD sales have all but disappeared and streaming has taken over. “Music is more accessible now, and you can listen to music from different countries around the world on streaming networks. Music will continue to be important in our lives despite the difficulties that new talents may face. A life without music would be so sad!”

For Cobo, the Latin Explosion which began 25 years ago has been fruitful. “There are those who criticize [these artists] for singing in English. But that was never a problem for me," she says. "Artists want to be seen and recognized and listened to by as many people as possible, and for Latinos, that explosion permanently opened the doors to the world.”