Rels B
Daniel Heredia Vidal, born 1993 in Palma de Mallorca, started out producing beats as a teenager under the name Rels Beats before becoming one of the biggest names in Spanish-language urban music. His catalog runs from scrappy boom-bap through moody Latin R&B to reggaeton-adjacent pop, tied together by a plainspoken, diary-entry style of writing about love, heartbreak, and where he came from. "A Mí" (2019) became his breakout streaming hit and helped push his sound - and Mallorca itself - into the wider Latin urban conversation.
Rels B has named The Weeknd as one of the core ingredients of his own "recipe," and it shows up whenever he drops the rapping altogether and leans into moody, melody-first R&B - half-sung hooks floating over slow, nocturnal production instead of bars.
listen forListen for the falsetto-tinged crooning, the reverb-soaked synth pads, and the unhurried, after-hours tempo on his more heartbreak-leaning tracks.
Before he was rapping, Rels B was a teenage beatmaker (Rels Beats), and in an interview he singled out Pete Rock, J Dilla, and Madlib as the "holy trinity" that pulled him into MPC and sampling culture - the loose, humid rhythm section under his earlier boom-bap output traces back to that lineage of producers.
listen forListen for the slightly-behind-the-beat drums, dusty chopped loops, and unquantized swing on his more straightforward early hip-hop cuts, before the sound opened up into R&B and Latin pop.
Rels B has singled out "el rollito salsero de Tego" (Tego's salsa-inflected groove) as one of the flavors he likes to fold into his own eclectic sound, and it surfaces as the looser, Caribbean-leaning percussion and party energy on his more summery tracks.
listen forListen for the live-feeling percussion, salsa-adjacent guitar or horn hooks, and the loose, danceable groove sitting underneath the reggaeton-pop foundation.