If creativity was valued heavily over experience, 24-year-old ROA would already be helming a Fortune 500 tech company with a focus on NFTs—ones he ideated and crafted. Luckily for Latin music fans, ROA is a budding artist ready to take his Gemini ingenuity to a pair of headphones near you.
Geminis are creative weirdos, yes, but you can also thank those eccentrics for the best music your ears ever listened to: 2Pac, Prince, Biggie, Kendrick Lamar, Paul McCartney, Andre 3000 and Kanye West.
“I need everything I do to have soul,” ROA says passionately. “If I do a reggaeton it has to have soul. Right now, I diggin’ that reggaeton has R&B sounds like FEID and Jhay Cortez. The music has more sentiment.”
ROA hopes his brand of soulful reggaeton and trap rises him from the pack. For a kid born in Naranjito, Puerto Rico it will be quite the feat. But he’s been bred for this game. His stepdad, funded classic compilation mixtapes (Boricua NY, etc.) of reggaeton yesteryear. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a 6-year-old ROA to see Daddy Yankee or Nicky Jam in his living room.
Yet, his mother steered him away of music and a young ROA focused on sports. Eventually becoming a volleyball dynamo and excelling at University’s Division 1 team as well as the U.S.National Team.
Around 2017, volleyball and school seemed less of a priority because he knew his true calling was a life in music. ROA left college during his sophomore year to pursue music full time. You’d think the road to inking a major deal with a parent in biz would easy butROA never told his pops about his musical aspirations.
“When I started doing music, he was in jail and I didn’t want to tell him becauseI wanted him to see me more ready,” he remembers. “For the first year and a half, I didn’t say anything to him. I never got the opportunity to tell him. By the time managers started reaching out and things we getting serious, he passed away.”
With his stepdad watching over him, ROA got to work. Between 2017 and 2019, he did various odd jobs and spent any available fundson studio time. Eventually he connected with Phantom, ½ of the award-winning production duo Subelo Neo (Bad Bunny, Anuel AA, Eladio Carrion, etc.), and he was first beatmaker to capture ROA’s soundin the lab.
“I need everything I do to have soul,” ROA says about his music. “The vibe is always gonna be really cabron—the music, the videos, the melodies. On my upcomingEP, I have reggaeton, R&B influenced tracks; they’ll have intros and outros, sampling, melodic traps, desahogos, etc. But once the public knows me, I’ll start presenting new things.”
ROA’s brand of R&B-tinged reggaeton and Latin trap soul is more in line with the futuristic sounds of Summer Walkerand the like. It’s sensual. It’s lustful. It’s baby-making music for Latinx.
“I have 40 tracks ready to go but it’s not time yet,” he adds. “I want to learn how to mix, learn how to play instruments, I want to write for others, I want to do it all. I get up every day and I want to see what I can learn that day.
