Pitbull's ready to bring the party to Hong Kong with his first show in the city
Critics slam him for being too commercial, but after growing up in a poor immigrant family, Pitbull is all about the hustle
While it's pretty easy to put most pop stars in a box, Pitbull's triumph is that he has achieved stellar success all over the world despite being far from easy to classify. Serving up a particularly party-ready blend of Latin music, hip hop, contemporary house and pop, he has sold more than five million albums and 60 million singles since the release of his debut album M.I.A.M.I. in 2004, and more than lived up to his other sobriquet, Mr Worldwide, with number one hits in more than 15 countries.
Despite all that, along with eight albums and several world tours, the artist born Armando Christian Perez has never made it to Hong Kong — an anomaly that will be remedied when he appears at AsiaWorld-Arena on March 21. "I'm excited to play Hong Kong for the first time," he tells 48 Hours. "I have had the honour of playing China, Japan and other countries in Asia over my career. I enjoy learning about different cultures, fashion and music around the world."
For such a star, Pitbull's career has been a fairly slow-burner. Signed in 2001 to hip-hop label Luke Records, owned by former 2 Live Crew leader Luther Campbell, he got his big break when he featured prominently on Atlanta rapper Lil Jon's 2002 album Kings of Crunk. A string of solid hits and well-received albums followed, but his career levelled off for a while before taking off with a bang in 2009, thanks to the insanely catchy I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho), based on a sample from 1995 smash The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall into My Mind) by The Bucketheads, aka house legend Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez.
The start of phase two of his career more or less coincided with the start of the global financial crisis, and it's perhaps no surprise that appetite for his uncomplicated, escapist party music spiked so spectacularly just as the world was being plunged into economic depression.
His first international number one came two years later with Give Me Everything, featuring singers Ne-Yo and Nayer and producer Afrojack, but his career really went supernova in 2013 thanks to the country-flecked party anthem Timber, which topped charts globally and became pretty much inescapable for a while. The same was true last year of We Are One (Ole Ola), the official song of football's 2014 World Cup, with American and Brazilian stars Jennifer Lopez and Claudia Leitte, which he performed at the tournament's opening ceremony in São Paulo, Brazil.
The album on which the song appears, Globalization, also features contributions from fellow stars including Jason Derulo, Sean Paul and Chris Brown, continuing Pitbull's habit of working with collaborators from a broad palette of musical backgrounds. Over the years he has also made music with the likes of Carlos Santana, Enrique Iglesias, Usher, Marc Anthony and T-Pain.
