Gonzalo Julián Conde, Bizarrap or BZRP, as can be seen on the cap that he wears in each of his appearances, is a worldwide phenomenon. At just 24 years old, the Argentine producer behind the black glasses that help him keep his figure a mystery has already reached the top of the music industry with his sessions with international artists.
And everything he touches turns to gold despite his low-cost marketing: with Shakira beat four Guinness records and already heard 50 million people in Spotify. A billing machine.
Magic
Without an album or a single song title, without a defined musical profile and jumping between genres and guest artists, “Biza” is one of the most listened to Latin artists in the world.
It looks like magic, but it’s not. bizarre he has become a renowned producer from his BZRP sessions on YouTube. Each session features a new artist, shot in a small room with minimal decor. There is nothing flashy or fancy about any of the videos of him. His sessions feature new and established MCs, from Argentina and Latin America to Spain. But there is no line beyond its own timeline: it publishes a new session every month.
In each of these videos you can see bizarre Mixing in front of a computer in the background: here the producer does not have the mega-consoles that have made other famous makers and DJs famous, in prestigious studios in Los Angeles or London. But even if it seems that Bizarrap is plugged into a shoebox, the final quality is extraordinary.
Regardless of the fame of the artist, the setup and art of the session remain the same. That’s all. It’s simple and effective: Bizarrap produces sessions that make you want to hear more from the artist. They give the feeling of featuring voices for the first time, naked performers: they can’t hide behind the choreography, the corps de ballet, the set with expensive cars and naked girls, and the masterfully shot and edited video. In a room with nothing but a PC, some recording equipment, and a microphone, the art stands out. It shows, in opposition to the “show”, that good music is nothing more than talent and dedication.
It is valid for all those who have gone through her sessions and have taken a leap, even if they had consolidated careers: even for Shakira, who had not enjoyed that publicity for almost a decade. So fans beg Bizarrap to do collaborations with their favorite artists because it will bring them guaranteed success… And today Bizarrap is pleased to choose.
Numbers
His channel on Spotify has more than 50 million monthly listeners (he would earn about 250 thousand dollars as a floor, about 3 million annually). Another 19.3 million subscribers follow him on YouTube, where he has more than 6.7 billion views (he would earn about US$4.5 million annually). And he has 23 million followers between Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.
A fandom that allowed him to sell out the tickets for his first show at the Palermo Hippodrome in just half an hour: he will have two more dates, to perform three consecutive days between April 20 and 22, where some 50,000 people will see him, assuring a turnover close to 3 million dollars at the official price, with tickets starting at 8,000 pesos. But he is also accompanied by half a dozen sponsors, from Adidas (he is one of the global faces of the brand) to MercadoLibre. He also has contracts with Burger King and Sennheiser, among others. His private shows are priced at over 150,000 dollars: he would have charged 65 million pesos for his presence at the Apple Festival, in Río Negro, in February of this year. A consolidated billing would allow him to amass more than 10 million dollars, after paying taxes and commissions.
In 2022 he appeared at Lollapalooza in Paris and at Pachá in Ibiza -along with Duki- as part of his first European tour that lasted 100 days and included 20 cities, summoning a total of almost 500,000 people.
Recognized as “Producer of the Year” and “Best New Artist”, he has just broken four Guinness records with “BZRP Music Sessions #53” with Shakira: the fastest Latin song to reach 100 million views on YouTube; and with more reproductions in 24 hours (63 million visits); figures that are added to those of Spotify, reaching 14,393,342 in 24 hours and more than 80 million in a week. These wiretaps would push royalties for 31 million dollars -with Shakira as the main beneficiary- according to Findasense Data & Intelligence,
The first Spanish-speaking artist included in the soundtrack of the video game “NBA 2K22”, celebrated even by DJ Skrillex, who invited him to share the stage at Lollapalooza 2023, the producer lives his moment of glory. One that he knew how to build with calculated steps and terribly effective marketing.
How to sell yourself
“I had a year left to finish my degree, but as I saw that my path in music was growing, I decided to take a break and apply what I already knew to my project,” Bizarrap explained in statements to Billboard. His three years of studying Marketing were enough for the producer to turn “Bizarrap into a concept, into a brand.” “How to reach more audiences and make more people listen, conceptually, is marketing,” he explains. Those premises marked his path to massiveness. An anti marketing where austerity was the key. Then, not repeating artists generated the unsatisfied desire to want more. And the surprise marked the way, even to keep the mystery about his person. Like other DJs before him (Daft Punk and Deadmau5, to name a few), he chose to hide his features. With simplicity: a cap and black glasses were enough to become a character.
A mystery that he knew how to preserve with few interviews: before appearing with Shakira on Jimmy Fallon’s “Late Night Show”, he had given reports to James Corden, the popular streamer Ibai Llanos, and David Broncano on “La Resistencia”, appearances that they allowed him to settle and validate himself in Spain.
True to its “less is more” marketing, Bizarrap shows up and goes into seclusion again. Even in his sessions, he is seen mostly with his back turned and in front of the computer. Which is not to say that it escapes popularity. He looks forward to it: each brand new session first becomes an event with trailers announcing the chosen one, a hook that immediately translates into a viral effect, which will guarantee that the song will hit the ground running from minute zero. An example: he achieved 23 million comments on an Instagram photo after asking for that number of interactions to post his “Music Session # 23” with Paulo Londra.
Nothing is casual with Bizarrap. Those who know him assure that he chains his movements with the precision of a chess player: after a meeting with Lionel Messi, star of the Parisian PSG, he presented the session with MHD, Mohamed Sylla, the French rapper and forerunner of Afro-trap. The hit included a mention of the Argentine captain, with calculated anticipation.
Women
Part of Bizarrap’s success has been escaping the male-dominant logic of rap and trap, thus doubling its reach. The producer offered a space for female artists to go head to head with the men. The “Biza” sessions allowed the female MCs to be as witty and sexually racy as they’d like, without having to make a thong-wearing music video. The session with Nicki Nicole was a before and after in that sense. And she repaid her favor by introducing him to Federico Lauría, who would later be her agent and the promoter of her international jump.
Lauría, promoter of independent concerts in Argentina, had just launched Dale Play Records in 2018, having early detected the potential of the urban music scene that until then was hidden in neighborhood rap battles such as the phenomenon of “El Quinto Escalón”. ”, the competition from which they emerged Wos, Duki, Thunder and Lit Killah, among many others. Lauria’s first signing was precisely Duki, and then he added Nicki Nicole. In 2019 he would go for Bizarrap, who was just 19 years old. “I fell in love with the project and his talent and creativity,” says Lauría. “For me it was the perfect bridge between the Argentine urban movement and the world,” she adds.
Settled in Spain for some time, Bizarrap found the gateway to the European and American markets there. Ranking that allowed him to sound all over the world: the session with the Argentinian turned Madrid native Nathy Peluso has more than 340 million views on YouTube and until the arrival of the song with Shakira was his greatest success on a list that includes Quevedo and L -Ghent, among many others.
Mystery
The executives of an important multinational record company enter the office of an Argentine producer who works in the same company to ask him: “Who is Bizarrap?” Average 2021 and Bizarrap and L-Gante have just reached the top of the Billboard Argentina Hot #100 list. “There is a unique phenomenon in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, the music producer Bizarrap, a kind of South American Dr. Dre, a hitmaker who has already accustomed his faithful base of tens of millions of followers to a monthly hit”, they explains the producer. “If Biza participates in the production of a song, it is likely that he will be more successful than the last release of Justin Bieber, Drake or Rihanna. His last session with the Mexican-American rapper Snow tha Product accumulated some 40 million views on YouTube alone, a week after his debut”, adds the Argentine executive before his peers at the record company who look at him incredulously. Two years later, his prediction is recognized when the success of “BZRP Music Sessions #53” with Shakira becomes a hit, following the success of “Sessions #52” with Spanish rapper Quevedo.
In this sense, this collaboration had an added value. His main artist is a producer who hides his face behind large sunglasses and a cap and who until the hit with Quevedo had only placed three songs on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs list in the United States.
After this initial success, the jump with Shakira appears as the top of a well-planned climb, a mystery revealed.
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