LOS ANGELES — Outside the Crypto.com arena in January, a frenzy of young Latinos assembled for Calibash, L.A.'s annual festival for música urbana, hosted by local radio station Mega 96.3.
With his performance sandwiched between MCs Jhay Cortez and Arcángel, 29-year-old rapper Myke Towers, the spitfire from Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, was raring to rise above the pack before thousands of Angelenos.
Onstage, Towers emerged from a cloud of fog sporting a large pair of canary yellow sunglasses and the stride of a heavyweight boxing champ. He kicked off his 30-minute set with the first song that landed him in the U.S. Latin mainstream: "Si Se Da," a reggaeton earworm that he wrote with hitmaker Farruko in 2019. Two songs in, though, Towers opted to ditch the statement shades — if he's going to make a good impression, he decided, it's more effective to meet his audience eye to eye.
