Viral Hitmaker Bizarrap Wants His Music to Speak for Itself

Bizarrap cultivates an air of mystery, so much so that when he first started gaining popularity, people questioned whether he was a real person. The Argentinian producer and DJ can usually be spotted in the background of his videos, back to the camera, shades obscuring his eyes, giving the floor—or, more accurately, the mic—to the artists he invites on the mega-popular YouTube music video series he started four years ago. “What I like most is that people get to know my music,” he says.

His numbers are impressive: 7.2 billion views on YouTube, 41.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Several of his videos and songs have hundreds of millions of views and streams. And Bizarrap, real name Gonzalo Julián Conde, has done it all without releasing an album. His meteoric but unconventional rise signals a shift in the industry, proving that newcomers don’t have to follow a certain path to find their audience.

On his channel, the 24-year-old producer and his guests record a simple music video for a jointly composed original song, often featuring his signature electropop sheen. They have gone viral for not just his beats, as with the EDM-infused rap banger with the Puerto Rican rapper Villano Antillano, but their content: his collaboration with Residente gave rise to a short-lived feud between the Puerto Rican rapper and J Balvin. Most notably, his January track with Shakira, in which she addressed cheating rumors about her husband for the first time, exploded in popularity, breaking several Guinness World Records. Suddenly, it had become much more difficult for Bizarrap to fade into the background.

Still, the artist has continued to cede the limelight. “I make music every day,” he says. “I like thinking about ideas for my videos, making teasers. I’m always thinking about the next step.” He leaves clues on social media as to what those steps might be, and who he might collaborate with—although he’s worked with some of the biggest names in the Latin music scene, there are still several on his wish list. At the end of the day, it’s all about the songs: “What’s important to me is that the music speaks for itself.”

Write to Moises Mendez II at moises.mendez@time.com.