Do we like J Balvin?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record with one real stain, an apology for it, and some real good work around Latino mental wellness and standing up to Trump.
José Álvaro Osorio Balvín was born in Medellín in 1985 and played guitar in a rock group by age 11. When his father's business went bankrupt the family moved to a smaller home, and he sold bits and pieces at school. A teenage exchange program in Oklahoma went sour, he ended up with an aunt on Staten Island, and he later dropped out of uni to chase music. He signed with EMI Colombia in 2009 and became reggaeton's global prince with hits like 'Ginza' and 'Mi Gente'.
The big stain is 'Perra', his 2021 clip with Tokischa. Black actors wore prosthetics to look like dogs, Balvin was shown walking Black women on leashes, and Black dancers were in cages. Colombia's vice-president called it “sexist, racist, chauvinist and misogynistic” in an open letter, and it came down from YouTube. He apologised, saying “I want to say sorry to whomever felt offended, especially to the Black community.” A Colombian court later dismissed a complaint that would have forced a formal apology, because the person who filed it was neither Black nor a woman.
On the harm check, that's the main black mark we found, and it's his own work, so we don't wave it away. Separately, a Colombian court ordered the artists behind the song '+57', which he featured on, to stop publishing music that violates children's rights, and he reportedly apologised too. On the other side, in 2015 he pulled out of the Miss USA pageant over Trump's remarks about Mexican immigrants. We found nothing in our searches about him pushing anti-trans, anti-vax or climate-denial material.
The feuds are the soap opera. Residente went after him with a diss track in 2022 after Balvin called for a Latin Grammys boycott, and the pair announced peace in a joint post on 31 December 2025. He's also squared things with Bad Bunny: at the Grammys in February he said they'd spoken recently and that he'd go to the Super Bowl halftime show to watch him. Making up in public is a decent look.
Lately he has been busy. He and Ryan Castro put out the joint album OMERTA in May, and he performed at the World Cup opening ceremony in Mexico City in June, riding in on a papier-mâché car, as The National described it. In May, C. Tangana publicly told him “You should be ashamed, clown” over a Milkman tribute at his Mexico City shows, and Balvin hadn't responded in that report. That one's a spat, not a scandal.
There's real good here too. He announced OYE in 2022, a bilingual wellness app, and spoke publicly about why the conversation matters for Latino communities. He took a stand on Trump in 2015 at a cost to himself, since the pageant gig was lost. The Latin Grammys and chart records are the shiny stuff, but the app and the Miss USA stand are what we'd tell the family about.