“We weren’t trying to create a musical genre, we just wanted to rap.”
He’s one of reggaeton’s most iconic artists. But he had to overcome addiction to achieve global fame ...
Brut spent a day with Nicky Jam at the Cannes Film Festival. #Cannes2022
He’s one of reggaeton’s most iconic artists. But he had to overcome addiction to achieve global fame ...
Brut spent a day with Nicky Jam at the Cannes Film Festival. #Cannes2022
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MusicTranscript
00:00Hello, this is Nicky Jam. You can check me out here on Brood. God bless, Nicky Jam.
00:30Yeah, that's good.
02:30Amazing, amazing, talented friend. First time in Cannes. The first time in Cannes.
02:42And I'm going to let Amaury introduce him. This is a fellow Puerto Rican.
02:47I have the honor of introducing a good friend, a person that I admire for his talent.
02:55He's a Boricua from Pura Sepa and he has a talent that the world knows him for.
02:59Nothing more and nothing less than Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky Jam.
03:13How did this project start? You were a kid.
03:16When we did it, we weren't trying to create a musical genre. We were people trying to sing.
03:20We wanted to sing, we wanted to rap, we listened to Jamaican music, which was the dancehall,
03:26and the people from Panama, who did dancehall in Spanish.
03:29I worked daily in a supermarket. I packed. I made $20 a day packing food to help my dad.
03:40With that we bought bread, milk, juice, the old man's cigarettes, and all that.
03:46And while I packed, I improvised, I rapped.
03:49And every time there was an event in the supermarket, I would climb on the platform and sing.
03:53They already knew me as a celebrity in the supermarket.
03:56And a woman found out. She asked me, hey, aren't you going to rap for me?
04:01And I said, well, I started rapping with everything.
04:04And that same day she told me, do you want to get in the car with me so you can meet my husband?
04:08My first answer was no.
04:12But she told me that her husband was a record label, that he worked with music,
04:19and she wanted me to meet him. And so we went.
04:22And that's how I met him and I signed my first record deal.
04:30My whole family was in this curse of drugs.
04:35And I was part of that.
04:37And I felt that I was irresponsible because I had the blessing to move forward.
04:42I had the requirements. God gave me the tools to break this curse and I never thanked him.
04:49And at one point I said, wait, we're not going to continue with this.
04:53And it wasn't easy. It was four days of suffering, of agony.
05:00Physical and mental.
05:02And then the mental situation.
05:05What people don't understand is that when you get rid of addiction,
05:08the problem is not getting rid of it, it's facing what made you fall into addiction for the first time.
05:13All those demons that make you fall into addiction.
05:16So I had to face all those demons and all those insecurities and all those things.
05:26Colombia represents, I would say, 50% of my return to music.
05:33They told me I was a legend when I didn't believe it.
05:37They told me I was someone great when I didn't feel great.
05:41And thanks to that love that country gave me, so beautiful.
05:45Today I'm in Cannes, in France, giving an interview.
05:48You can't go to Cannes and not feel like you're in Cannes.
05:53Today I'm in Cannes, in France, giving an interview.
05:55You can't talk about reggaeton, the history of reggaeton, without realizing it.
06:01For me, Bad Bunny is a fruit of what I worked on.
06:04For me, Maluma. For me, J Balvin.
06:07For me, all these singers of today are fruits of what I worked on 25 years ago.
06:13So it gives me a lot of happiness. I'm happy.
06:16I love to see what's going on and I'm not looking for merit.
06:20Because I know how the system works.
06:23You get the merit when you're not alive anymore.
06:26I know what I've done for the genre.
06:30And I'm not saying people don't give it to me.
06:32They give it to me and they respect me.
06:34But for me, the most important thing is to enjoy what I worked to harvest.