Marc Anthony, a Latin music legend, finally has his star on the famed Walk of Fame after thirty years as a famous performer.
A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is being awarded to the most popular tropical Latin performer of all time. Marc Anthony, who was only 24 years old when he had his first international hit with a cover of Juan Gabriel’s “Hasta Que Te Conoci” in 1993, reinvented Latin pop music by making salsa more intimate, emotional, and passionate.
The stats are staggering: around $500 million in concert earnings over the course of a career, 33 number-one Marc Anthony songs on various Billboard charts, numerous RIAA gold and platinum awards, 8 billion YouTube views, two Grammys, six Latin Grammys, and more prizes and awards than can be named in this article.
His strong, rising voice is still a phenomenon 30 years after he first became famous. His longstanding producer, Sergio George, claims that he saw Anthony’s exceptional aptitude from the start.
His musician father Felipe named him after the great Mexican singer Marco Antonio Muz, and he was born to Puerto Rican parents in New York City’s El Barrio (East Harlem). At the tender age of three, Anthony recalls joining his father in song.
At the intersection of 102nd Street and Third Avenue, he experienced two distinct musical movements during his formative years: the organic fusion of Latin and soul music that occurred in his barrio and the explosion of retro-Cuban salsa in the late ’70s. There were Marc Anthony songs of love, and there was a wide variety of upbeat pop music sung in English.
Before releasing his first single in 1988, titled “Rebel,” Anthony had been a busy session vocalist, performing in both English and the hip-hop genre known as freestyle. He was best known for his work with house music pioneer Todd Terry and the Masters at Work team, which included Little Louie Vega and Kenny “Dope” González (with whom he opened for Tito Puente at Madison Square Garden in 1992) and Anglicized his given name effectively to prevent disarray with his still-active namesake.
His decision to pursue a singing career in Spanish was unanticipated. For one thing, despite having heard Spanish throughout his life, he was never able to master the language. But when he joined forces with George, who was the in-house producer for Ralph Mercado’s RMM label, everything changed, and he quickly became fluent in Spanish. Two years and seven No. 1 songs on Billboard’s Tropical Songs list resulted from the band’s second album, “Todo a Su Tiempo” (1995). A more accurate description would be that “Contra la Corriente” (1997) was the first salsa album to break into the Billboard 200 album chart.
Anthony and George collaborated on a new kind of pop salsa, which immediately became popular and spawned many copies. In the beginning, he told Smith, all he wanted was “to get out of the neighborhood.” The opportunity to perform in front of enormous audiences in several Spanish-speaking nations presented itself suddenly. After making his mark on the international Spanish-language music scene in New York, he moved south to Miami.
His eyes were opened to the immense potential of the international Spanish-speaking market, which is mostly ignored by the established U.S. music industry. His two biggest hit singles in the United States were both sung in English (“You Sang to Me” and “I Need to Know,” both from his self-titled fourth album in 1999), but he never lost sight of his ultimate goal of breaking through to the Spanish-speaking world. Eleven of his thirteen albums are dubbed in Spanish.
He also recorded with his then “Marc Anthony wife” Jennifer Lopez throughout their marriage, also has a strong commitment to acting, as evidenced by his moving performance as the lead in Paul Simon’s “The Capeman” (1998) alongside Rubén Blades and Ednita Nazario. People loved Marc Anthony and Jlo together. Anthony’s first album came out the same year salsa icon Héctor Lavoe passed away, and Anthony portrayed Lavoe in the film “El Cantante” (2006).
Together with his lifelong friend and collaborator Henry Cárdenas, he established the charitable Maestro Cares Foundation. In 2014, Maestro established the Nios de Cristo orphanage in La Romana, Dominican Republic. Since then, the organization has established similar facilities in Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere in Latin America. In 2017, he and Magnus founded Somos Una Voz, an organization that brings together artists and sports to aid disaster-stricken communities.
However, his music and that voice serve as the backbone of the whole thing.