Anuel AA

Carolina, and a father inside the business

Emmanuel Gazmey Santiago was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, on 26 November 1992, inside the record industry rather than outside it: his father, José Gazmey, was a vice-president in the A&R department of Sony Music Entertainment. The post went when Emmanuel was fifteen, and the household changed with it; Rolling Stone later described the result as a son of the streets. He had begun recording at fourteen and started uploading tracks in 2010, at eighteen, onto the free platforms that carried Puerto Rican trap before any label would touch it.

The streaming counts arrived before the infrastructure did. Rick Ross signed him to the Latin division of Maybach Music Group, and the 2016 mixtape Real Hasta la Muerte set out the template he has barely left since: a half-sung, half-rapped delivery over trap drums, lyrics about money, weapons and wrecked relationships, and the automatic-fire adlib, BRRR, that works as a signature in place of a hook.

Thirty months, and an album recorded down a phone line

On 3 April 2016, with the mixtape still building, he was arrested in Guaynabo for illegal firearm possession and handed a 30-month federal sentence. Ninety days of it were spent in solitary confinement after an altercation with another inmate. He made his debut album from inside, recording vocals over the telephone and finishing the work during a mandatory stay at a Miami halfway house.

He walked out on 17 July 2018, the same day the album landed. Real Hasta la Muerte reached number 42 on the Billboard 200 and topped the US Top Latin Albums chart, and within six months he had vocals on eleven singles charting on Hot Latin Songs. By his own account he came out of two years inside not knowing how to talk in interviews, which did nothing to slow the release schedule.

The run of records that fixed his position

July 2019 brought China, a five-way collaboration with Daddy Yankee, Karol G, Ozuna and J Balvin built on a sample of Shaggy's It Wasn't Me, and it remains the song most likely to be playing when a room that is not a trap audience hears his voice. On 17 October 2019, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, he took five Latin American Music Awards — New Artist of the Year, Favorite Male Artist, Favorite Urban Artist, and both Album of the Year and Favorite Urban Album for Real Hasta la Muerte — more than anyone else that night.

Emmanuel followed in May 2020, a 22-track double album with Bad Bunny, Enrique Iglesias and Lil Wayne on it. Los Dioses, a joint record with Ozuna, arrived in January 2021. Las Leyendas Nunca Mueren, sixteen tracks, came in November 2021, and LLNM2 in December 2022. Across all of them he leans on interpolations of songs from his own adolescence, which is part of why the catalogue plays as a continuous body of work rather than a sequence of pivots. He records for his own Real Hasta la Muerte imprint through Sony Music Latin.

A touring record with holes in it

The live operation has been less steady than the discography. The Rompecorazones Tour, his fifth, ran from 21 July 2023 — Rolling Loud at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami — to 3 October 2023, fourteen shows across North America, Europe and South America. A Montevideo date on 29 August 2023 was scrapped over financial problems and a Guatemala City show on 28 October was pulled on health grounds after emergency surgery cut into the end of the run. The EP the tour was named after was never released.

The Real Hasta la Muerte 2 Tour, his seventh, opened on 3 November 2024 at Tecnópolis in Buenos Aires and was built as 30 shows across 27 cities in South and North America, including three sold-out nights at the Movistar Arena in Santiago with a fourth added. The North American leg went on sale on 1 May 2025 through CMN Events and ran from the SAP Center in San José on 8 August 2025 to the Amalie Arena in Tampa on 21 September 2025.

What has not materialised is the record. When the 6 November 2026 UBS Arena date in Belmont Park was announced in September 2026, promoter Zamora Live was still describing Real Hasta la Muerte 2 as a forthcoming release — two years after the tour carrying its name began.

Where he is now

He has kept the singles coming instead. Te Canto Bajito with Blessd and SOG arrived in March 2025, and 2026 has produced a steady drip — NETFLIX AND CHILL, Kileros, Las mas bonitas son p#tas, Donde Hubo Fuego Cenizas Quedan, CAPCANA COCOA, and VAMO A VEL with ROA on 18 September 2026.

The summer was festival work in Spain: Puro Latino Madrid Fest on 26 June 2026, then the Estadio La Cartuja in Seville on 25 July. The autumn and winter diary is denser and mostly Latin American. The Kaseya Center in Miami on 17 October 2026 is followed by LIV in Miami Beach on 22 October, the Reggaeton Lima Festival on 31 October, UBS Arena on 6 November, the Vive Claro Distrito Cultural in Bogotá on 21 November, Coca-Cola Flow Fest at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City on 28 and 29 November, three nights at Tecnópolis in Buenos Aires on 3, 5 and 6 December, and four Santiago arena nights on 13, 14, 18 and 19 December.

Mexico has slipped. The Monterrey show at Estadio Borregos, originally set for 17 September 2026, is now listed for 8 April 2027, with a Zapopan date at the Coliseo GNP Seguros a week later on 15 April. Existing tickets were held valid rather than refunded.

The show as it stands

A full headline set is long and front-loaded with catalogue. Setlists logged across the Real Hasta la Muerte 2 Tour average 43 songs, many of them played as fragments: a Una palabra intro into Na' nuevo, Medusa and Más rica que ayer, then a long middle of Sola, Adicto, 47, Quiere beber, Secreto, La ocasión and Ella y yo, closing through La jeepeta, Bebé and China. Festival appearances are a different animal — four songs in Madrid in June 2026, seven in Seville in July.

Reviews of the 2025 arena run are mixed in a specific way. Covering the Kaseya Center show on 19 September 2025, the Miami Hurricane's Gabriel Mena described a production that carried the night — flames, strobes, projections and a Lamborghini driven onto the stage — against a performer who moved little and worked a repeating pattern of full song, a cappella chorus, then adlibs. Anuel came on around 11pm, close to two hours late, and ran past curfew to roughly 1am. Mena rated the opener, Blessd, above the headliner for energy and crowd handling, and noted an audience that stayed quiet through verses and only lifted for choruses.