Rauw Alejandro Opens Up About Tears and Frustrations — And Triumphing With a New Team: ‘You Either Get Stuck or You Evolve’

On a late-spring night, Downtown Miami was a place out of time. Thousands of people gathered dressed to the nines, the women rocking sequined gowns and kitten heels, the men wearing tailored suits and polished dress shoes. Their attire fused Puerto Rican culture and Mafia fantasy and seemed beamed in from decades ago — but the crowd entering Miami’s Kaseya Center on this warm evening wasn’t there for an act of yesteryear, but rather one of the hottest arena artists on the planet.

“It was a whole vibe,” Rauw Alejandro says over Zoom months later, now off the road and back home in Puerto Rico. “It felt like we went back to the past and you can feel that energy. It’s not mandatory, but if you dress up, you’ll have more fun because you’re immersed in the story. You’re literally traveling to that time and age.”

Like many arena and stadium stars today, the 32-year-old reggaetón star encouraged audiences to follow a special dress code for his show. His Cosa Nuestra tour this year channeled the elegance and glamour of a certain 1970s New York, along with the Cosa Nostra that ruled it. For the shows, he constructed an alter ego: Don Raúl, a suave Nuyorican hipster living in the Big Apple.

“I lived in New Jersey at an uncle’s house after Hurricane Maria [in 2017],” says the artist born Raúl Alejandro Ocasio Ruiz, who considers New York his second home and whose father was born in Brooklyn. “I went there to work for a year and took the train to the city to continue to do my music. I’m in Puerto Rico most of the time, but for work, my base is New York. So I moved back there three years ago when I was looking for inspiration for this new chapter. I was immersed in the culture… all the Broadway shows, jazz clubs, speakeasies, and I worked with that aesthetic for my new project.”

Rauw Alejandro will appear in conversation during Billboard‘s Live Music Summit, held Nov. 3 in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, click here.

With Cosa Nuestra, Rauw created a world for his fans to soak themselves in — one far from a typical reggaetón concert. The Broadway-inspired, four-act show featured sophisticated costumes, a six-piece live band and eight dancer-actors, all part of a storyline driven by Rauw’s biggest hits.

The show follows Rauw’s Don Raúl as the young immigrant tries to make it in the big city — and along the way falls in love, experiences betrayal and even gets arrested. “What makes my tour unique is the smoothness of the storytelling and how it connects with my songs from the beginning to the end,” Rauw says. “I think I’m setting the bar very high.”

The ambitious concept has yielded returns that would please Don Raúl. Across spring and summer legs in North America and Europe, respectively, the Live Nation-produced tour grossed $91.7 million and sold 562,000 tickets, according to Billboard Boxscore, making Rauw’s fifth tour the most lucrative of his career. He just returned to the road for dates in South America and Mexico and will wrap the tour with a five-date residency at San Juan’s Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot — his second multidate run at the venue this year — in November.

With its achievements, the trek, in support of Rauw’s fifth studio album, 2024’s Cosa Nuestra, has mirrored his chart success. The album and tour take their name and inspiration from another Cosa Nuestra, the genre-defining 1969 salsa album by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, two influential salsa figures who revolutionized the golden era of big-band artistry and popularized the genre in the ’60s and ’70s with the culture-shifting Fania label. For the set, Rauw fused his signature perreo, electro-funk and R&B with bomba, salsa and bachata for a sound entirely his own.

Audiences responded: Upon its November release, Cosa Nuestra debuted at No. 1 on Top Latin Albums and Top Latin Rhythm Albums and at No. 6 on the Billboard 200, marking his highest-charting set, and first top 10, among five career entries. In late September, Rauw unleashed another album, the “prequel” Cosa Nuestra: Capítulo 0, which debuted at No. 3 on both Top Latin Albums and Top Latin Rhythm Albums.

“The meaning of Cosa Nuestra is so big that I have to release 20 albums to explain its concept. There’s no time to do that in just one album,” Rauw says with a laugh. “I’m going to continue to bring my roots to the world. Nowadays, I feel so connected with my people and am very proud of where I come from. I don’t have to look outside when I have everything here.” This is how Rauw’s globe-trotting tour came together.

‘I Want To Work With the Best Teams in the Industry’

Rauw’s 2023 Saturno tour grossed $50.2 million but had its entire Latin American leg canceled due to technical and logistical problems. Duars Entertainment, the company led by Rauw’s then-manager, Eric Duars, produced the tour through its Duars Live division, and afterward, Rauw and Duars parted ways. Rauw’s new team, led by the trifecta of co-manager Jorge “Pepo” Ferradas (who has managed Latin stars including Shakira) and longtime Rauw associates Matías Solaris and José “Che” Juan Torres, is now helping him streamline his operation.

Rauw Alejandro: For me, it was very frustrating not completing the Saturno tour. I’m not going to lie: There were months that I would cry in my shower, in my bed, f–king frustrated because I put so much effort in what I do. I took my time. I trained a lot. There were many things that were out of my control. My old team was a mess and disorganized. I consider myself one of the best artists right now, so I want to work with the best teams in the industry.

Jorge “Pepo” Ferradas, co-manager: I received a call from one of Rauw’s lawyers and [his] business adviser, “Che” Juan, and he told me that Rauw was creating a company where he would, in a sense, be the director. I met Matías [Solaris], Rauw’s personal manager, and we created this trilogy management format. We are three different people who have been able to tackle all areas of the business, slightly breaking the norm of having a single manager.

Rauw: After having the same management for seven, eight years, for me, it was a huge change in dynamic in my work and it was challenging. I was kind of scared because there were things I didn’t know how to do. But now, it feels nice to have a team who believes in you and in your project. They’re not afraid to lose anything; they just want an artist that can create and bring new things to the table.

Ferradas: Rauw was determined to grow in every area. He knew he was facing the challenge of making perhaps the most important album of his career to date, and we understood that to present it live, we had to put on the best possible production that would reflect the artist’s growth. We had to find strategic partners, in this case Live Nation and UTA [where Rauw signed in 2024], who knew how to think, dream and execute on a grand scale.

Rauw: You either get stuck or you evolve. Now I’m doing the music that I want with the people that I want and I feel really happy. This has been the best year of my career.

‘He Wanted Them To Be Classy With Suits and Ties’

When Rauw headlined New York’s Governors Ball festival in 2024, he introduced his new alter ego by wearing a pinstripe suit reminiscent of a ’70s Nuyorican hipster. But Don Raúl had been in the works well before that — and Rauw would have to wait a little longer to bring him to the masses.

Ferradas: Planning and timing are key to making things happen. Often, the public doesn’t see or isn’t aware of how much time a project like this takes.

Felix “Fefe” Burgos, choreographer: Rauw and I always have conversations, and when he first proposed this entire [Cosa Nuestra] concept to me, I thought, “Oh, damn!” He’ll be working on an album, and we’ll start talking about the next one. As we’re working on one tour, we’re already working on another one. We knew from a long, long, long time ago that he was going to release an album that was going to be very band-­incorporated. When he was doing [2022 album] Saturno, he was already talking about Cosa Nuestra.

Adrian Martinez, creator and show director/co-founder of creative agency STURDY: A year before the [Cosa Nuestra] tour started, Q1 of 2024, I went to New York to meet with Rauw and start talking about what Cosa Nuestra was going to be. He played me [lead single] “Touching the Sky” for the first time and told me that was going to be the vibe. We walked around the city that same night for about two hours, went to different parts, took photos of buildings and talked about architecture. We went to eat, went to a bar and talked about what we wanted to do. These were all super-early ideas, but we had a year to develop [them]. It gave us an ample amount of time to really home in on the details.

Rauw: It was difficult to create this tour. I like to wait for people to listen to the album and see how they respond before I create the show rundown — which songs am I going to take out of my old catalog? Which are the new songs I’m going to add? It’s a whole lot of thinking to make it smooth and nice, and that takes time. It all started after my performance at Gov Ball in June.

José “Sapo” González, musical director: Right before Saturno came out, Rauw was already saying he eventually was going to need a full band but that he wanted them to be classy with suits and ties. This all became reality for his performance on the Today show in [2024] and he never looked back.

Ferradas: Last year, the strategy was to do festivals and TV specials, always knowing that the tour would be scheduled for 2025. He [played] several [festivals], including Sueños in Chicago, Global Citizen in New York and [played] the MTV Video Music Awards for the first time.

Mike G, partner/agent, UTA: His team invited us to a one-week camp to share ideas and strategies, so they really let us form part of his overall business, which I think gave us an advantage as agents. The more we know about a project, we can plan a lot better.

Rauw: As an artist, what helps me a lot is to plan my work two to three years ahead. I don’t like to repeat myself in projects. I like to do different music, and having a map and being organized helps me go through it. I get a lot of inspiration and I’m always taking notes. Yes, I’m in this chapter right now, but I’m already planning my next one. I think that helps me [remain] innovative and versatile in this industry.

‘It’s a Broadway Show in an Arena’

Rauw knew he wanted a special live treatment for the world he had created on Cosa Nuestra. But translating the album to the stage — and with the elaborate, Broadway-­caliber production he wanted — was tough.

Martinez: We knew it was going to be all New York. It was inevitable. Immediately, we thought of the things that were important to New York and how these stories were told. Personally, I thought of West Side Story. How do we take inspiration from that to give an ode to what’s come before? Rauw and I even went to see The Great Gatsby together [on Broadway]. Then we sat together for two straight days to write the script and [develop] what the narrative was going to be. We had a blank page up on his TV, and we went through all the acts.

Mike G: His tour is a movie, very cinematic. I think he set the bar very high. It’s about cultural ownership, authenticity, about pride. The production feels very personal. You follow the storyline, you get invested in it, and that’s hard to do during a concert. He’s telling a story while playing some of his best records.

Rauw: Cosa Nuestra is not a stadium show. It’s a Broadway show in an arena. I would even say it’s the biggest Broadway show. In a stadium, you [wouldn’t] be able to see all the details because it’s too big. We planned this show for arenas.

Burgos: The part I felt was challenging was, “How do we make a concert into a Broadway play?” Because at the end of the day, this isn’t a Broadway play. This is a concert, but you want it to feel like a show.

Martinez: There were so many props, production elements that all had to work together so closely. We were down to milliseconds on transitions. The Saturno [tour] was also time-coded but [had] less going on and more just [relied] on him singing, dancing and interacting with the crowd. There weren’t really any theatrics [on that tour] compared to what we did in Cosa Nuestra.

Burgos: Everything in that show is choreographed. We needed the cues to be perfect because there was very little room for freedom in certain aspects. When we did the choreography for [the tours supporting 2020’s] Afrodisiaco and [2021’s] Vice Versa, yeah, you can floor-hump because that was the vibe, but for Cosa Nuestra, he wanted it to be classy. We wanted the choreography to be sensual but not vulgar.

Rauw: Throughout my entire career, I’ve been focusing on being one of the best performers in the world, and I focused a lot on dancing, but having a live band was my dream. It allowed me to explore different sounds while feeling more classic, more clean, more elegant.

González: The band unifies all of his catalog into this new universe. The best example is what we did with [Saturno’s] “No Me Sueltes,” which now passes through a bunch of musical genres and fits right into Cosa Nuestra. The band also adds versatility and energy and a vibe. It’s not a background band — everything is about enhancing Rauw and making that connection with the fans stronger.

Martinez: We were all feeling like we were taking a huge risk. This was never done in the genre. How were people going to react to the pace? When you break down the show, it’s so different from your typical concert. We said, “As long as we’re all on the same page about this, it could be great, or not” — but we believed in it.

Sean Coutt, merchandise creative director/founder of fashion label Pas Une Marque: Cosa Nuestra is almost a personal story of Rauw and his upbringing in New York, so ­creatively, [the merchandise] had to tie in. Rauw approved every single design himself. That really shows that he’s very dedicated to his fans and that he cares about what we’re putting out. He really wants that to be an opportunity for fans to see that he’s not only creatively onstage but also 360.

Rauw: I make the final decisions on everything related to the tour: the music, the stage, the band, the dancers, the lighting, the props. I’m very involved with all the teams. I have a huge team who are the best, but I’m very picky and need to see everyone’s work.

Ferradas: Rauw represents this generation of artists who are superinformed, involved and very clear about what they want. He always fought to achieve what he wanted, and he corrected us every step of the way so things would come out as he envisioned it. It came naturally. He’s very involved in the artistic side of things.

‘He’s a Cultural Icon’

With a new team in tow that’s helping him reach an even larger global audience, Rauw is gearing up for his next career move — and a much-needed vacation.

Ferradas: We knew we wanted to start in the United States; it was key to be able to showcase the show there and hold 30 concerts, including [four dates in] Puerto Rico. We knew we had to go to Europe in the summer and continue in Latin America, where the most loyal fans are, and then come back and finish in Puerto Rico.

Mike G: In London he played at the O2 Arena for the first time, and Germany is always a unique market, but he did extremely well. We were never worried about any market. We were very confident, even about the ones he had never visited before. I know there’s going to be growth and opportunity moving forward in Asia. He held a festival there last year, so I think that’s going to be another great market for him.

Rauw: I would love to conquer Asia with my music; it’s one of my goals. I’ve been to Japan many times and performed there for the first time last year. It’s totally different performing for them. Japanese people are really organized. It’s not like us Latinos that are loud and crazy. Setting a new goal is what always keeps me going and gives me energy to continue working and craft my art.

Hans Schafer, senior vp of global touring, Live Nation: When you talk about global benchmarks, Rauw’s position competes on the same level as top global pop acts, not just within Latin music. When we talk about his place in the industry and what this tour has accomplished, it’s as high up with any of the other global acts, regardless of genre.

Mike G: He’s a cultural icon and he’s growing outside of his core genre. The unique thing about Rauw — and what separated him from a lot of artists in certain key markets — is that he can do 50,000-plus tickets.

Schafer: When we look at some of the tours internationally that we’ve been doing, including Rauw’s European leg that we did in the summer, you see the diverse markets and that those fans are there. Those fans are crossing over, even more so than what we’ve seen in the past.

Mike G: When you think about Rauw, he is in the conversation. His work ethic, high energy; he’s physically dynamic, he’s got a strong stage presence. He has that crossover appeal; he has a loyal fan base. The demand is big, it’s major. If he wanted to do stadiums next year, he could do it, but he needs to take a vacation first. He needs to put his phone down, rest, and when he’s ready, we can plan accordingly. He has that luxury.

Rauw: I haven’t taken a break since I started touring this year. I began working on this tour after my birthday [Jan. 10] and continued working until today. My next vacation is going to be Christmas. After the holidays, I’m probably going to disappear for a while, but meanwhile, I’m already with a small notebook and taking notes for my next chapter.

This story appears in the Oct. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.