Tainy

The producer, songwriter and beat wizard known as Tainy is that rare creature: a chart-topping artist who also happens to be one of pop’s most future-forward forces. Though he came up in reggaetón’s first wave, he’s since helped usher in the genre’s breezier, more sonically diverse iteration, influenced by R&B, trap, trance, heavy metal and more. Born Marco Masís in 1989 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Tainy signed with the powerhouse reggaetón production duo Luny Tunes when he was just 15 years old. While apprenticing at their studio, he witnessed the genre’s biggest names crafting hits, including Don Omar, Ivy Queen and Tego Calderón. He made his production debut on the influential reggaetón compilation Más Flow 2 (2005), followed by 2006’s Los Benjamins, which led to a co-producer role on Wisin & Yandel’s 2007 release Los Extraterrestres—a massive coup for any teenager. His early collaborations with the duo proved successful, including addictive dance-floor numbers like “Pam Pam” and “Abusadora” (for which he won a Latin Grammy). But Masís was not content to rest on his laurels. A voracious consumer of music, he grew increasingly inspired by American producers like Timbaland, whose complex, next-level beats found commercial success. His own experiments bore fruit: he produced all but three tracks on J Balvin’s adventurous 2018 release Vibras and helped make Bad Bunny’s debut album the riotous success it was. Perhaps his biggest success was co-producing Cardi B’s 2018 hit “I Like It”, on which his touch updated a boogaloo vamp with undeniable 21st-century swagger. He continues to shape reggaetón’s evolution into the 2020s, elevating new artists with his talent incubator NEON16 and producing Justin Bieber’s left-field R&B banger “Habitual” in 2020.