Orlando Bravo discovered his edge early. In 1985, at age 15, he traveled from his home in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, a small town on the island’s western coast, to Bradenton, Florida, to enroll in the legendary tennis guru Nick Bollettieri’s grueling academy.
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Eighteen months ago, Noah Assad, who manages the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, was driving in L.A. when he heard his client’s music blasting from a car in the next lane. “I look to the right, and it’s a lady not understanding what Bunny’s saying, but she’s rapping, murmuring the words,” Assad recalls. “That’s when I found out: People who don’t even know Spanish are very interested in what we’re doing.”
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Brytiago closed out Artistix’s New York Fashion Week show on Thursday night, becoming the first male reggaeton artist to do so. Sporting the brightest neon green ensemble of the group, the Puerto Rican singer stood out with ease, as he walked the strip accessorized by his abs and a stacked array of diamond chains.
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Nearly two years ago, Hurricane María exposed the raw dysfunction of Puerto Rico, collapsing long-neglected infrastructure and leaving several thousand dead on Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s watch.
Last week, two of his top former officials were arrested by the FBI on corruption charges.
But the scandal that is threatening to buckle the boyish 40-year-old governor centers on a profanity-laced and, at times, misogynistic online chat with nine other male members of his administration in which some of the U.S. territory’s most powerful men act like a bunch of teenagers. The leak of at least 889 pages of the private chat has sunk Rosselló into the deepest crisis of his career.
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Héctor Figueroa, one of the nation’s most prominent Latino labor leaders and a “champion for working people, minorities, the poor, the voiceless,” died of a heart attack Thursday night in New York, according to the union 32BJ.
He was 57.
Figueroa, a Puerto Rican, has been credited with reinvigorating the union — the nation’s largest property service workers union — and working to boost its relevance amid current trends that have seen an erosion in the numbers and clout of organized labor.
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Puerto Rico has given us a lot of musical talent, especially in the urban genre. And yes, a new artist is growing and his name is Jefnier Osorio Moreno, artistically known as Lunay.
At only the age of 18, Lunay has achieved what many others dream of. For example, seeing his name for the first time on the Billboard charts and having a song with Daddy Yankee and Bad Bunny.
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You already know Jhay Cortez. The Puerto Rican singer has been urbano’s secret hitmaking weapon for a minute; he’s credited as a writer on Billboard-charting singles like Anuel AA’s “Amanece,” Natti Natasha and Ozuna‘s “Criminal,” and Bad Bunny’s “RLNDT,” to name but a few. At least two of the biggest bilingual singles of the past couple years—Cardi B‘s “I Like It” and the Benny Blanco and Tainy’s team-up “I Can’t Get Enough”—benefitted from his work behind the scenes. And he’s been as essential to the stateside ascent of J Balvin as has the Colombian reggaetonero’s longtime producer Sky El Rompiendo. But in his mind, he’s still a kid in the studio, hungry for his own time to rock the mic.
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It’s the American Dream for the digital age.
Three years ago, Maria Al-Sadek was a college student living in Alabama. Now she’s a rising model, writer, stylist and influencer — working with brands such as Marc Jacobs and Armani Beauty — who lives in Brooklyn. She also boasts more than 400,000 followers on Instagram.
“I’m just exploring all the things I like to do,” the 27-year-old, who posts under the handle @MariaAlia, told The Post.
The daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and Palestinan-immigrant father, Al-Sadek wasn’t used to seeing many people like her growing up.
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To his mother, David Hance was a shy, nerdy Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx who had an unhealthy obsession with video games. To everyone else, he was Allied—a world-class esports champion, whose boisterous live-streams garnered thousands of views. For years, Hance navigated these disparate identities with ease. But then, at age 24, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.
In a new documentary from The Atlantic, Hance’s family undergoes the emotional process of reconciling the David they knew with his secret identity—a professional gamer and tragic hero, beloved by a large online community.
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Tainy’s résumé goes as far back as 2005, when he was one of the producers on Luny Tunes’ Mas Flow 2 reggaeton compilation album. Since, he’s worked with Wisin & Yandel, Jennifer Lopez, Plan B, Selena Gomez, J Balvin and, most recently, he dropped his collaboration with Bad Bunny on “Callaita.”
One of the things he’s most proud of is being a young music producer, and he thanks Puerto Rico for that. “Growing up in Puerto for me is a blessing,” the 29-year-old producer says in this week’s “Growing Up Latino” episode. “I know you feel proud wherever you’re born in, but it gave me my passion, which is music, and it gave me an opportunity to show what I can do: being able to do that at such an early age and being able to call myself a music producer.”
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