We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Notorio 718 a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Notorio, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I have a few meaningful projects that come to mind. But I think the one that impacted me the most was a song I dedicated to my late Father whom passed away in 2019. That song was very difficult to write because of the loss and making the music video was even worse. It was very difficult to keep my composure. In the process of writing, it is like a form of therapy, but you also reflect on so many memories. And I guess that was the hard part to have to face all the times I might have slighted him or how I should have prioritized our time together more. I’ve been surrounded by death my whole life but this one really hit me hard. I remember in the recording process, as am laying the vocals, I turn to look at the producer and he had tears running down his face. It turns out his father had passed away when he was younger and he was reflecting on his relationship with his father as he heard what I was vocalizing. Unfortunately the pain is too deep and I still can’t listen to this record, hopefully someday!

Notorio, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Being raised in the Bronx, I believe music is a big influence for all of us. Obviously I grew up with Hip Hop all around me. Plus my mom had a diverse taste in music. Every weekend when it was cleaning time, you would hear Soul music, R&B, Pop Music, Merengue, Salsa, Bachata etc. You name it from Luther Vandross to Michael Jackson to Juan Luis Guerra, Jose Jose, Whitney Houston to La Fania to Madonna to George Michael just to name a few. So that obviously exposed me to so many rhythms and sounds. I think I was born with a love for music.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons I had to learn was to not take things personal. I would get super upset after all the time, energy, money and sleepless nights, I would release a record only to have it fall on deaf ears. But two factors came into play. First factor was I didn’t know what marketing yourself was and two I cared too much what others thought, which affected how I was making the music. But one day I had an epiphany and realized if people are going to like or not like it, did not matter. As long as I stayed true to myself and did it my way I would be fine with the results. Soon as I made those adjustments I started seeing an increase in traffic overtime. It also helped doing some studying on how marketing works.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to be heard, make people dance and hopefully have a discography that can match any mood. I would like to collaborate with different artists from around the world that speak different languages. Music can be a bridge for equality and love amongst one another. So far there have been a few artists and producers that I have collaborated with from different places, such as Raxiel El Leon & Mr Dimelo (USA/Dominican Republic), PMY (Iran), MerlinTheWizard (France), La Javi (Sweden/Chile), Yencil (Ecuador/Dominican Republic), C.i (Nigeria), Sent (Cuba), Radical One (Dominican Republic), Onesun (USA/Puerto Rico) to name a few. But I would like to grow that list a lot more.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @notorio718
• Facebook: @notorio718
• Twitter: @notorio718
• Youtube: @notorio718
• TikTok: @notorio718
• Threads: @notorio718

Image Credits
All fotos were take by Mathilda Anderzon at Visionarez.