walking upstream…
Blessd
sourcesCNN Español — ¿Quién es Blessd? (bio, market work, "Imposible" remix origin) · El Colombiano — "Soy muy explícito en lo que hablo" · El Colombiano — La historia de Blessd (Arcángel/Akapellah credit, corroboration) · Orlando Weekly — Blessd talks inspirations (Arcángel/Akapellah credit, freestyle-uncle anecdote) · mitú — From Selling Fruit in Colombia to Collaborating With Maluma (Maluma quote) · El Colombiano — Así fue que Maluma y Blessd se unieron (1OF1 album, "él es el papá" quote) · Semana — Maluma y Blessd sorprenden con nuevo álbum (1OF1 album context)
Stiven Mesa Londoño grew up in the barrios of southern Medellín, waking at 2 a.m. to sell fruit and candy alongside his father at the Central Mayorista market before school. "I would make eight dollars to ten dollars per day at the market," he told Billboard. "With that money, I would record parts of a song" — an intro one week, a chorus the next, until he could afford a whole track. His uncle, a freestyler, was the only musician in the family and taught him to rhyme; a producer nudged him from pure freestyle toward something sung, and 2019's "Una" went viral in Medellín overnight. "Medallo" carried him nationally, and Maluma's 2021 remix of "Imposible" turned a barrio kid with borrowed studio time into a headliner at the Atanasio Girardot — proof, in his account, that the block could write the hooks a country sings.
the sound in question
2021
MedalloBlessd
walk the tributaries ↓
Maluma2010s · Reggaeton / Latin trap / Latin pop
Maluma reached out himself in 2021 to remix Blessd's "Imposible" — the collaboration Blessd, Billboard, mitú, CNN, and El Colombiano all point to as the moment that took him national. Three years later, when Maluma called with the idea for a joint album, Blessd didn't hesitate: "no le iba a decir que no a Maluma, él es el papá," he told El Colombiano. He'd already told mitú as much: "Maluma as a person is someone that I admire... he took me to the next level." They built the 2024 album 1OF1 filming its videos on Blessd's own streets in Barrio Antioquia.
listen: upstream & heresource: Billboard — Latin Artist on the Rise ↗
2017
Felices los 4Maluma
2021
Imposible (Remix)Blessd
listen forPlay Maluma's 2017 "Felices los 4" before Blessd's "Imposible" remix and the throughline is audible before Maluma's guest verse even arrives: the same softly clipped, breathy delivery riding a spare, mid-tempo dembow, built to sound intimate rather than aggressive. It's the glossy, romantic register Maluma had already patented in Medellín reggaetón — and the one Blessd steps directly into the moment the beat drops.
Arcángel2010s · Reggaeton / Latin trap / Latin hip hop
Before he ever sang a hook, Blessd was a Medellín kid freestyling with the uncle who'd taught him — the only musician in his family. Four outlets across five years, from Billboard in 2021 to El Colombiano in 2026, report the same detail: his "referentes" from that era were the reggaetón veteran Arcángel and the Venezuelan rapper Akapellah, the pair he credits with pushing him toward music in the first place. Arcángel had already spent over a decade snapping between a rapper's talk-cadence and a wounded, half-sung hook — the hybrid Blessd would build his own reggaetón around once a producer talked him out of pure freestyle.
listen: upstream & heresource: Billboard — Latin Artist on the Rise ↗
2008
Por Amar a CiegasArcángel
2024
MírameBlessd
listen forCue up Arcángel's 2008 "Por Amar a Ciegas" next to Blessd's "Mírame": both hooks break out of a sung melody into a flatter, talked-through cadence mid-line, then snap back to croon the payoff — the trick of never quite settling into pure singing that Blessd's teenage "referente" seems to have handed down. No collaboration or cover ties the two directly; this is a shared vocal habit, not a documented studio link, so listen for the resemblance rather than a debt.
Akapellah2010s · Freestyle rap / Hip hop / Trap
Akapellah is the other name Blessd reaches for in the same breath as Arcángel — a Venezuelan freestyle-battle rapper who won the 2014 God Level championship, the first Venezuelan to take an international title, and represents the pure battle-rap side of Blessd's hip-hop apprenticeship. Blessd never dressed up his own writing as clever wordplay; he told El Colombiano, "Soy de barrio, soy muy explícito en lo que hablo. Le estamos metiendo las frases y dichos de acá, de la cuadra, a las canciones" — a direct, street-level narrating voice that reads like Akapellah's battle-rap instinct rerouted into reggaetón hooks.
listen: upstream & heresource: Billboard — Latin Artist on the Rise ↗
2016
MilkiAkapellah
2021
Quién TVBlessd
listen forSet Akapellah's 2016 "Milki" — a rapid-fire, slang-dense dissection of Venezuela's economic collapse — against Blessd's "Quién TV": neither song reaches for metaphor. Both pack the verse with hyper-local, block-level references delivered flat and fast, the same de-la-calle narrating instinct Akapellah built his freestyle-battle reputation on, now riding a reggaetón beat instead of a cypher. No joint recording exists between the two; the link is a shared vocal approach, not a documented collaboration.