Nicky Jam in Concert
It's impossible to talk about the world's most viewed YouTube clips without Nicky Jam's name coming up. The reggaetón master has three videos with more than a billion total views. "El Perdón" (with Enrique Iglesias) and "El Amante" have more than 1.2 billion plays each, and his 2018 single with J. Balvin, "X," has well over 1.5 billion plays.
As he readies for 2019's Intimo Tour, Nicky Jam has already played on the world's biggest stages. He's made Chile's Viña del Mar International Song Festival somehow seem intimate with his stadium performance of "El Perdón." He's been watched by millions of American households alongside Balvin on the The Tonight Show. And he broadcast to billions worldwide at the World Cup alongside Will Smith and Era Istrefi with the tournament's official song, "Live It Up," during the final match extravaganza in Moscow.
The songwriter has a number of hits under his belt, none bigger than the 4x diamond-certified "El Perdón," which was No. 1 on the Hot Latin Songs Billboard for an exceptional 30 weeks and won Song of the Year at the Latin Music Awards. A master collaborator, Nicky Jam featured Sean Paul, Wisin, Daddy Yankee, Iglesias, and Balvin on his latest album, Fénix, and recently released the track "Jaleo" with Steve Aoki.
Nicky Jam Background
Born Nick Rivera Caminero in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Dominican mother and Puerto Rican father, Nicky Jam moved to Puerto Rico with his family when he was 10. He was soon discovered, and he released his first album when he was 14.
The singer later met his idol Daddy Yankee, who became a mentor of sorts, and in the late 1990s the pair formed the short-lived group Los Cangris. Jam moved to Medellín, Colombia, in 2007 and was influenced heavily by the community and by Colombian vallenato music.
Where reggaetón was going electronic, Jam focused on vocal melodies and reggae rhythms, and his 2017 comeback album, Fénix, put him squarely at the top of the Latin pop and reggaetón heaps. Along with frequent touring shows, Jam appears in the movie XXX: Return of Xander Cage and raps on the film's soundtrack.
