De La Ghetto Enters New Era With ‘GZ,’ His First Studio Album as an Indie Artist

De La Ghetto has entered his new career era with the release of GZ — his first studio album in three years and the first released independently under his label Latin Nation Entertainment, distributed by The Orchard.

Home to 12 tracks, including the previously released single “My Love” with Quevedo, GZ (short for his alter ego De La Geezy) navigates sultry and bold R&B sounds, inspired by the genre’s street vibe in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. The set also embraces a few hard-hitting reggaeton tracks as heard in the Myke Towers-assisted “Me Dijeron,” which samples Mario Winans’ “I Don’t Wanna Know,” and unapologetic trap as heard in “Ya Lo Sabes” with Arcangel, Nesi and Villano Antillano.

“The creative process was a little bit different because we weren’t going to do this album. We just wanted to drop singles, but my manager put the pressure on me,” De La Ghetto tells Billboard. “The vibe was different because this is the first album I’ve dropped as an independent artist, so there was more motivation. I didn’t have a crazy deadline, there was no pressure, I just flowed and was having fun with the album.”

The artist’s last album was the star-studded Los Chulitos, released in 2020 before parting ways with Warner Music Latina.

Unlike Los Chulitos, on which he teamed up with acts such as Nicky Jam, Rauw Alejandro and Manuel Turizo, De La Ghetto reeled in a new wave of trap and reggaeton stars from La Isla del Encanto (RaiNao, Dei V, Lyanno, and others) — all of whom remind him of himself when he was a rising urban artist in the early 2000s. 

“Sometimes the old-school producers, as great as they are, are drained from doing a lot of work. I wanted to bring that new energy, that new sound from Puerto Rico to the world — I wanted to use the people from my island without taking credit away from the artists in Colombia, Argentina and the Dominican Republic,” he explains. “When I work with new artists, I let them take control. When we’re in the studio, I let them lead and show me what they want to hear from the new De La Ghetto. At times I even find myself, finding new ways of rapping and new melodies, because this is always changing. Music is moving really fast.”

After personally selecting his collaborators and following a creative span of nine months, GZ was created.

“That’s why I took sometime after ‘Los Chulitos’ to release a new album because I was by myself, I was independent, and I was trying to find that passion of mine to create music,” he says. “What’s the point of releasing an album without feeling? I couldn’t just drop an album with no purpose. It’s not in my DNA.” 

Stream and listen to the GZ album below: