Born Carlos Alberto Pizarro in 1975, he was 20 before Puerto Rican DJs started to acknowledge his strident recording output. During this period, he was the first to admit that his shyness -- completely absent from his bold, relentless vocal style -- prevented him from performing much live. However, years before he become a rubber-stamped ambassador for reggaetón, it was guest appearances on singles such as 1997's "Posicion" -- by the genre's forefather Daddy Yankee -- that helped galvanize his confidence ahead of the awards that followed 1998's Exclusivo. The 2000 compilation Reggae Love Vibes focused on his romantically themed output to date, and served as a good bridge between his early sound and the reggaetón that followed. Although he enjoyed modest success in the U.S. with the 2004 single "Porque Tu No Estas," it was a territory that proved hard for him to crack. As a result, he focused on consolidating his fame in Puerto Rico for the next few years before relocating to South America.
His 2010 guest appearance on Los Verdaderos, a successful album by the reggaetón duo Zion Lennox, was a high point of his first few years in Colombia. However, in 2012 he was charged in relation to an attempted murder and firearms breach, spending months in Medellin's Bellavista Prison before being released due to insufficient evidence. The track "Bella Bella" made direct reference to his incarceration. He then enjoyed a prolific run of singles through 2016, when a warrant was issued for his arrest following the revocation of his earlier acquittal. Fleeing to the U.S., he continued to publicly declare himself innocent while paring back his musical output until 2020's Inmortal. ~ James Wilkinson, Rovi