“Hola.”

“Hello.”

“Hey.”

“Hola que tal?”

“I smell hits, man.

I do.”

“Is there any way that you can call me back in two minutes?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You brushing your teeth?”

“Yeah, I’m brushing my teeth.”

“We’re going to start this, but in a, like,

on the level, you know?”

[singing’]

“Spanish music is just

having this beautiful moment that artists like me —

I’m from Barcelona.

It’s a blessing that I can share my music with so

many people around the world.”

[singing]

“What do you remember about the sessions for ‘Con Altura’

and how that started?”

“Yeah, I remember that I said I wanted

to do a song that has this classic reggaeton vibe,

like Daddy Yankee.

It feels like they are rapping.

But it’s not rapping because it has melody, you know?

And I love that.”

“When you’re making a sound for her,

she knows exactly what sound she wants.

That to me, is like, I don’t know,

that’s Rick Rubin [expletive], you know what I mean?”

“So I was thinking, O.K., I would

like to do a session with Pablo and with Frank Dukes.”

“You know, her kind of having this really, like, unique

approach to pop music was, like, super exciting for me.”

“Frank pulled, like, little different, like,

samples, loops.

The ear he has for sound design,

like, his stuff always sounds special.”

“My friend Teo had made the little voice loop,

and it was way slower.”

[music]

“And I’d sped it up.”

[music]

“I just had this vision for Rose

to do something like super hypnotic.”

[singing]

“This melody was sick.

I was just like, O.K., O.K., let’s do something with this.

And I proposed Pablo to create percussion.”

“It was just like that boom, tap-boom, tap-boom.

Tap-boom, tap.”

[music]

“Just like a reggaeton beat, like, everywhere in the world

kind of like understand

that is a reggaeton beat.”

“Whenever I was making the drums,

Rosalía was looking for samples.”

“I was just digging on the internet.

I was just digging, digging, digging, digging, digging.”

“We love to look on YouTube for stuff and just,

like, have fun and laugh.”

“And I found it, and I was like, O.K.,

this is something amazing —”

“… arrancarlo con altura —”

“I remember her playing something,

and then Pablo being like, ‘Oh that.’”

“Vamo’ a arrancarlo con altura.”

“Con altura, like that.”

“So Pablo just started [expletive] —

[expletive] with it, do you say that,

you know?”

“Con altura.

Con altura.

Con altura.”

“Hello.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Fresh teeth.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me a little bit about the phrase ‘con altura.’

Where did it come from?

What does it mean?”

“Con altura is with style, with, you know —

with elegance.”

“I was, O.K., this is like —”

“We all just started to kind of, like, freestyling,

writing melodies and rhythms to it.

But me, just using my ears phonetically

to be like, ‘Oh, that sounds good’ — because obviously

I don’t know.

I don’t speak Spanish.”

[singing]

“Some people, I think they hear camaron,

and they think it’s shrimp or something.

But that’s also — that’s a flamenco musician, right?”

“Yes.

When I was 13-years-old, I discovered

Camarón de la Isla.”

“He just changed, completely, my perspective

of expression, art.

It just changed my life, you know?”

“She contacted me and invited me to one of her shows.

It was like a little, little show.

But the way she pulled it off, I thought, she’s a star.

She may not know it, but she’s a star.”

“When I just finished the show, I just met him,

and then he told me, ‘You’re a gangster.’

He told me that.

I think we are an amazing team, producing together,

composing together, and making music in general together,

you know?”

[singing]

“And is it your voice on the hook?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s my voice on the hook.”

“So you originally recorded it, thinking

somebody else would come in and fill in those parts?”

“Yep.”

“We wanted to have Tego Calderón.”

“For whatever reason, it didn’t work out.

But, like, regardless of what happened, it’s just like —

it just sounded really [expletive] good

with Pablo on it.”

“I was excited about the song.

And I was proud of it.

I just started thinking about who I would

like to have in this song.”

“Hola, José.”

“Hey, como estas?”

“The hair’s fire right now.”

“Thank you, my G, you know.”

“Balvin is a good friend of mine.

So I just sent the song by WhatsApp,

and he just replied to me like, ‘What —

que es esto?’”

“I loved it.

I wasn’t expecting that when she —

when she sent me the song, you know?

It’s not that I wasn’t expecting something good

from her.

But I wasn’t expecting it was like a straight-up,

pure reggaeton.

I was like, ‘Wow, this is fire.

Let’s do it.’”

“He was, like, very excited with the song, too.

So in less than 24 hours, he just

sent me his bars.”

[singing]

“Right away, next day, she sent me that.

I did it right away.”

“You know, he just did it.

And it was amazing —

I loved it.”

[singing]

“Was any part of you nervous about making a reggaeton song?

You’re from Spain.

It’s not necessarily what people would

imagine you would do next.”

“I mean, I guess that I always do something

that nobody expects, honestly, because for me, that’s

what makes sense and that’s the point of being

a musician.”

[singing]

Were you guys really on a plane, or was it a set?”

“It’s a set.

It’s a set.

Yeah.

No, I don’t know how fly a plane.”

“Just making sure.”

[singing]