Latin Grammy-nominated producer Rvssian says dancehall and Hispanic music are similar; they just speak different languages. The Rich Immigrant CEO made the comments recently on the Let’s Be Honest Podcast when he was asked about his sojourn from dancehall to Latin to hip-hop music. “I am a major success over there,” the 35-year-old St. Andrew native said, adding that he had a burning desire to enlarge his territory even when reggae record labels did not believe in his vision.
“I felt like there was more for me; I felt like I, as Rvssian, was supposed to do more. I always used to listen to Hispanic music because as a young youth, a relative used to bring a lot of Hispanic girls around, and that’s how I got familiar with the artists and the sound,” he said.
Rvssian said moving to Miami, where there is a large Hispanic community, was an avenue to achieving his goals as a Latin producer and described the pivotal moment the remix of a dancehall song took him to the praise land, resulting in him selling tens of millions of records.
“Moving to Miami, one of my friends said, ‘Yo, I had a Gyptian song named ‘Wine Slow‘ that’s mashing up the place, and I wanted to remix it.’ One of my dogs suggested putting Farruko on it. I reached out to their team, told them the idea, and they loved it; they already knew about dancehall songs I had produced before,” Rvssian said.
Before the song blew up, he said he had a hard time convincing VP Records executives about his dream of merging Latin and dancehall, saying, “Funny enough, VP had Gyptian signed, and they said, ‘Rvssian, what are you doing? You’re wasting your time, and this will never work.’ I did it, then Latin music blew up, and it worked. They called me saying, ‘Let’s try to revisit the topic.’ They never saw the vision. That is the first song that opened my eyes to the genre of working and saying I should blend two of them and even seeing it’s almost the same music; just one is in a different language. It’s the same riddim pattern, same melody, same everything.”
Rvssian’s biggest Latin song in the US is “Krippy Kush” by Farruko, released by Sony Latin, which was certified Diamanté and then went on to be certified 16x Latin Platino on April 16, 2018, by the Recording Industry Association Of America for selling 960,000 equivalent units in streams and sales in the US. The song got a remix with a young Bad Bunny and some of the top hip-hop acts, and Rvssian says it has sold 10 million units, referring to Diamond certification, but the RIAA has not issued such a certification for the song.
‘Krippy Kush,’ Bad Bunny, Farruko Remix, Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, 21 Savage, that record was a groundbreaking record; it sold a lot. I think it’s ten million to diamond. That moved the whole culture; Bad Bunny, that was his introduction to Americans, where he had white Americans, Black Americans saying, ‘Who is this? What was that Latin Trap to that mainstream market?’ So culturally, that was a big record,” he said about the Latin hit.
He said songs like “Passion Wine” and ‘”Sunset,” the latter selling 240,000 units in the US, were big records, but they did not move the culture, citing incorrectly that “Sunset” sold 8 million for its 4x Platino RIAA certification.
Errors in his sales calculations aside, Rvssian said there is more humility to be found with Latin acts than their hip-hop counterparts. “Latin artists are more humble and easygoing, and then Hip Hop is ego-driven. Sometimes the men feel like they are bigger than who they are. Just dealing with that, me and all the hip-hop men, we’re good. Kevin Gates was one of the first hip-hop men I produced a few songs on his album, stuff with the Migos, so much I can’t remember,” he said.
He bragged that he is able to command respect across genres because of the way he carries himself in attire and the quality of music he makes. “They trust me because when I’m in the studio with them, they hear the music; it speaks for itself. They know who I am and how I carry myself. I walk into the studio; I am wearing the same watch they have, too, sun crazier,” Rvssian explains.
