The digital age may have opened a veritable Pandora’s box of online phenomena, for better or worse. But one truly great thing that the convenient nexus of social and streaming brought to our lives has been the music, presenting the world with unprecedented access to sounds and scenes often seemingly impenetrable or inaccessible to outsiders. Nothing illustrates this quite like the explosive growth of música urbana, the catch-all term that includes reggaetón, into the global mainstream.

Together and individually, DJ Nelson, MarioSo DeJesus, and Huey Dunbar played a vital role in the emergence, development, and, notably, the commercial success of this music, earning critical accolades and international awards along the way. As a co-founder and force behind the Puerto Rican collective known as The Noise, DJ Nelson cultivated reggaetón from the ground up, dropping definitive mixtapes and Luring Recording Engineer DeJesus and singer-songwriter Dunbar from New York to his vibrant studios on the island. Both in spirit and in practice, their past and present contributions to all manner of Spanish-language hip hop, R&B, and pop mattered, and continue to do so to this day as seasoned power players with a personal stake in furthering the movement.

After some chance encounters with Native Instruments during NAMM, the opportunity arose to capture these accomplishments and share them with the next generation of producers. In light of their participation in making bespoke Latin Sounds.com packs, we spoke with all three production and songwriting living legends about their come-ups and their craft.

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