C Marí

A reaction channel first, a catalogue second

Carlos — Charlie to the people around him — set up Los Xavales in 2020 with his friend Tuti, posting reaction videos and song breakdowns to YouTube from Valencia. The channel widened over the following years into artist interviews, live gaming streams and eventually events of its own: the Gordo Music Festival and a self-run set of music awards. He had been making tracks alone before any of that, and has said the channel is what handed him the contacts and the means to treat music as the main job rather than the sideline.

His listening runs through older brothers and an early bachata habit: C. Tangana's Agorazein presenta a: C. Tangana and Yung Beef on one side, Dellafuente, Bajozero Che and Jona ALK alongside, Romeo Santos arriving via a crush. He is blunt about what he is doing with it — 'Yo no estoy inventando nada. Intento decir cosas reales con las que se pueda identificar la gente.' He now lives in Madrid, describes himself as shy away from a stage, and admits to enough imposter syndrome about his own material that he will not put it on when friends are round.

Vacaciones en Septiembre, then Darkside

The early work sits on the EP Vacaciones en Septiembre, which carried En Otro Lugar, Giannis, Te busco and No Tesla — songs that still anchor the older end of a set. The step up came on 9 May 2024, when he presented the Darkside EP at Sala Independance in Madrid to a sold-out room, the first night of a solo run under his own name rather than the channel's.

That show set the template he has used since. It opened with París-Beauvais over footage of the Eiffel Tower, then worked backwards through the catalogue instead of forwards, from the newest material to the Vacaciones en Septiembre songs. Airport departure announcements and projections held the travel conceit together. DJ BLNCO, who produces much of the catalogue, played the opening set and then stayed on stage for the rest of it. Later in the night came Tu Forma de Amar, KB9 and 2024, plus a tease of unreleased work with Raul Clyde and acoustic versions with BLNCO; the guest appearances the crowd was waiting for did not actually materialise.

Sempre Cor and a very good 2024

The debut album proper, Sempre Cor, arrived in December 2024: fourteen tracks moving between trap, reggaeton and corrido tumbado, produced largely by BLNCO, with guest turns from Mushka and John Pollón — both picked, he says, because he knew them and the music fitted, not because a feature list needed filling. The title is his own formula for how to work: 'Sempre Cor es no hacer nunca las cosas por hacer. Es hacerlo por los que te odian, pero hacerlo más fuerte por los que te quieren.'

Readers of WHAT Magazine voted him the most creative person of 2024. Interviewed for that magazine in a café in Chamberí on 16 February 2025, he described the album as a reality check that made him put the focus on music properly, and set out a release rhythm that rules out long silences: 'I'm an artist who enjoys releasing music and making songs. I don't like putting out ten songs every two years.' He also flagged what was coming — a deluxe edition, then something lighter and more danceable for the summer, away from the album's emotional weight.

The Sempre Cor tour ran through 2025 and sold out rooms including Madrid and Valencia. It finished at Sala La Riviera in Madrid on 7 October 2025, doors at 19:30 and on stage at 21:00 — a jump in room size from the clubs the Darkside run had played eighteen months earlier.

Latin Lover Songs, in two volumes

The promised lighter turn became a series. Latin Lover Songs the Mixtape followed in 2025 and entered the Spanish albums chart at 45. Latin Lover Songs 2 came out on 3 April 2026: six tracks, sixteen minutes, released on his own account with exclusive distribution through Universal Music Spain rather than a label deal.

It entered the Spanish albums chart at 36 in the week published on 13 April 2026 — the only new entry anywhere inside the top 100 that week, which says something about both the release schedule around it and the size of the audience he now moves. The music across the two volumes leans harder on bachata and romantic reggaeton than the trap of the debut, which is roughly where the Spanish press now places him.

Standing, autumn 2026

The summer of 2026 was spent on festival bills rather than his own rooms. He played Arenal Sound at Burriana across 30 July to 2 August, Riverland Fest in Asturias between 21 and 23 August, and the B-Festival at Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona over 18 to 20 September. In between, on 10 August, he played a free show at the Plaza de España in Pontevedra as part of the Festas da Peregrina — announced on 5 June by the local paper, which called Sempre Cor a generational record and singled out the care taken over his staging and the closeness he keeps with the crowd.

One date is currently on sale: 6 October 2026 at Shôko in Madrid, on a shared bill with Kristina and Juicy Bae, which makes it a showcase slot rather than a headline night. Songkick lists him as on tour with 11,416 people tracking his dates. A third Latin Lover Songs instalment has not been announced, and on his stated working rhythm the gap since April is about as long as he tends to leave.

What the room actually gets

The live show has stayed a two-man operation: C Marí out front, BLNCO behind the machines, no band. The structure is deliberately unusual — recent material first, older EP tracks later, so the night unwinds towards the songs the earliest part of the audience arrived with. Projections and recorded announcements carry the travel framing, and the between-song talk is direct rather than staged, which is the part reports keep returning to.

At festival size that becomes a compressed run of the singles; in a club it stretches out and the older Vacaciones en Septiembre songs get room. What the Madrid shows have demonstrated is that the tickets go: Sala Independance sold out in May 2024, the Sempre Cor run sold out in Madrid and Valencia, and by October 2025 he was closing a tour at La Riviera.