Rauw Alejandro: “I can do whatever I want, however I feel in the moment”

Rauw Alejandro is an effortlessly cool guy. With one arm comfortably draped over the sofa, slicked-back hair, tinted Prada glasses and a sweeping black overcoat, he speaks slowly, often finishing his thoughts with a soft, self-assured smile.

The only time his laidback charm is broken is when he talks about performing live, the 32-year-old shifting from characteristic calm to boyish excitement. “It’s another world on stage. Your music is taking life and form… It’s so special,” he says, leaning forward with arms extended, gesturing as if shaping sound itself. “This tour is going to be way different to anything I’ve done before.”

The Puerto Rican star is clearly excited to take the stage for his upcoming ‘Cosa Nuestra’ tour. At 45 dates, kicking off in the US next month and moving onto Europe, starting with a stop at London’s O2 Arena, it promises to be his biggest tour to date. “I’ve always been a big fan of performers. Michael Jackson, James Brown, I grew up watching them,” he smiles. “When I started doing music, I thought ‘if I’m going to be on stage, I have to dance.’”

A style icon with five best-selling albums to his name, Alejandro is a full-package artist, fuelling his restless creativity into perfecting every detail – from the intonation of a lyric to each step of his meticulously choreographed routines. As a performer and a showman, he’s not in the game for attention, but to genuinely captivate his audiences and give them a hell of a good time. “I’m one hundred percent a perfectionist, I always need time [to rehearse], that’s my problem!” he laughs.

NME meets Alejandro in January during Paris Men’s Fashion Week, where he looks every bit the part at events across the city. He turns heads at the Saint Laurent show in a sharp brown suit from Anthony Vaccarello’s Spring 2025 collection, sitting comfortably among the world’s haute trendsetters. But he’s not just here to flex his fashionista status; he’s cleverly teasing elements of the upcoming tour – the tailored suits and hair gel are all part of the character.

Released last November, ‘Cosa Nuestra’ (which sounds secretive and sexy in Spanish but translates rather flatly in English as ‘Our Thing’) follows the journey of a Puerto Rican in New York City. Its backdrop is the wave of migration from the Caribbean island to the US mainland in the 1940s, in pursuit of “the American dream”, as Alejandro explains.

“The tour is a whole experience. Everyone should dress up fancy”

Alejandro’s family were among those chasing that dream. His grandparents moved to New York in the 1950s, where they had six children. The family, including Alejandro’s Brooklynite dad, eventually returned to Puerto Rico, where the musician was born and raised on the stories of the diasporic experience. ‘Cosa Nuestra’ explores these generational journeys, but Alejandro adds his signature theatrical flair by embracing the mafioso references of the title’s Italian translation (‘Cosa Nostra’).

You get a sense that to really understand and appreciate the depth of the record is to see Alejandro perform it onstage, where the singer reimagines the hardships, joys and romances of that migration with flourishes of West Side Story and a touch of The Godfather. Listen to the opening titular track, and you can picture heavy velvet curtains opening to reveal Alejandro standing centre stage, welcoming you to the show as the cinematic salsa song rings out, with bursts of gunfire spitting between the polyrhythms.

There are plenty of references to the golden-age salsa that date from his grandparents’ time in the city. The record’s title refers to the 1969 album of the same name by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, Puerto Ricans who met in New York and worked the dusky live music halls. It also features a cover of Frankie Ruiz’s sunny salsa hit ‘Tú Con Él’, where Alejandro’s impassioned vocals prove he can level up to the genre’s all-time greats.

Yet ‘Cosa Nuestra’ is no salsa album. While rooted in the past, it’s a distinctly modern-day opus, eclectic in its influences. From a cover of Laura Pausini’s ’90s pop ballad ‘Se Fue’ to a spitfire reggaeton collab with old-school legends Alexis & Fido on ‘Baja Pa Aca’ to the Pharrell-featuring tropical-trap serenade ‘Committed’, the album races through genres. While such variety could risk diluting its conceptual focus, Alejandro insists it’s all part of the story.

“I want to show people I can do whatever I want, however I feel in the moment,” he says. The mob narrative is reflected by the charged urbano songs, while salsa and R&B tracks chart the more personal side. “You can find aggressive trap, but the character is also elegant, so you’ll find romantic and deep songs.”

Let’s pause on the romantic side of Rauw. It’s no secret he’s a heartthrob (one particular high-profile ex is marked strictly off-limits for this interview) and this album plays that up. On ‘Baja Pa’ Aca’, there’s an innuendo about being at a funeral and getting buried that probably isn’t fit to be translated here, while the Bad Bunny-featuring ‘Qué Pasaría…’ gets straight to the point: “What if we went back to those nights I spent inside of you”.

But there’s also a more vulnerable side. On his latest single ‘Ni Me Conozco’, he sings “it’s your fault that now I look in the mirror and don’t know myself”, the song starting as a solid trap number before dissolving into noise, signalling his descent into delirious heartbreak. Stripped back and raw, it’s one of the album’s most powerful moments and proof he doesn’t always need to amp up his lover-man bravado.

“I’m one hundred percent a perfectionist”

He says that both sides of love come naturally to him as a songwriter. But Alejandro is a melody maker first and foremost. “I’m obsessed with melodies. I focus more on the melody than the writing – to me, it’s not what you say, but how you say it.”

Alejandro typically begins his songs with a melody hummed over some piano chords, before changing up the tempo and exploring different rhythms, from merengue to trap. It’s a process that encourages productivity: he’s released an album a year since 2020 and he’s not stopping now. Even at a hefty 18 songs, there wasn’t enough space for all his ideas on ‘Cosa Nuestra’, so he’s already teasing ‘Cosa Nuestra: Volume 2’. “I did 40 songs for this album. The next one is a [continuation]. It’ll be the same character, this boy in New York” is all he’ll say.

He’s already fleshed out this persona onstage at last year’s MTV VMAs. Performing a medley of hits infused with the traditional sounds of Puerto Rican bomba and plena, he assumed the role of the tight-vested, body-popping mobster, much to the delight of the audience, including a starry-eyed Sabrina Carpenter. For the upcoming tour, he wants his fans to match his energy. “It’s a whole experience. Everyone should dress up fancy.”

‘Cosa Nuestra’ is many things: an exploration of heritage, a gangster tale, a romantic story. But above all, it’s an experience that Alejandro wants his listeners to get fully into. Meet him halfway if you see him live: dust off the fedora and get your shoes polished. After all, ‘Cosa Nuestra’ is our thing – you can be part of it too.

Rauw Alejandro’s ‘Cosa Nuestra’ is out now via Sony Music Latin, with volume 2 on the way. Find Alejandro’s world tour dates and ticket info here

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