Eladio Carrión

Around the time he was breaking through on the Latin charts, rapper Eladio Carrión went to a 50 Cent show in Miami. This was idol territory, childhood fantasy territory. Carrión got a handshake and a picture. Recounting the story to Apple Music’s Ebro, he said he told the rapper, “You know, 50, I know you don’t know who I am, but you’re gonna know in a little.” Oh, really? 50 said. “Yeah, really.” Not long after that meeting, Carrión recorded a hard piece of classic-sounding minor-key rap called “Si Salimos” with—guess who? Carrión likes to say he “manifests” this stuff, which sounds cool. But the real secret ingredient is work—and he does the work. Born in 1994 into a Puerto Rican military family, Carrión bounced around as a kid before ending up in Humacao, Puerto Rico, when he was 11. After a string of increasingly high-profile features and collaborations, he broke out with a flurry of projects released in quick succession: the Latin hybrids of the Sauce Boyz projects and the more traditionally rap-centric SEN2 KBRN volumes; the 2021 album Monarca and 2023’s even more highly evolved 3MEN2 KBRN (tremendo c****n). Part of what sets Carrión apart is his ability to reconcile seemingly disparate styles, whether classic, hard-hitting trap (“Kemba Walker”) or dance-floor-oriented reggaetón (“Triste Verano”), melodic sing-rap (“Mbappé [Remix]”) or lyric-driven bars (“Air France”). And, like he says, his ability to make collaborations happen—with the likes of Future, Lil Wayne, and Quavo—that might’ve been unthinkable not long before. “We really did this bridge between American and Latino artists for the first time,” he said of 3MEN2 KBRN. "There hasn’t been an album like this before.”