Inside the first crop of urban music artists, Enzo”fmkSauthier was the first to be a success of gigantic proportionswith millions of plays of Excuse me in 2018, five years before the genre’s current immense rampage. That argument today has 100 million views on Youtube.
Moreover, I know you (with Tiago PZK, Lit Killah, Rusherking) e Calm (with María Becerra) have more than 50 million.
FMK has dozens of collaborations and his lyrics have been hits with other artists, from Duki to Lola Indigo, Rei. Emanero, Estani, Ke Characters, Beret and Mau & Ricky.
In times of pandemic he had stopped playing live and only resumed last year, when he filled a Movistar Arena and toured 80 shows across the country. Now she has a big show again in the Capital, this Friday the 14th at Luna Park.
“April 16 -he says- marks an exact year of Movistar. We wanted to do Luna on the same date, but we didn’t succeed, so it was postponed to the 14th. It was my first show with ticket sales and with the whole circus of what I wanted to show as a concept”.
-How did you spend it, what do you remember?
-It was a bit strange, because the idea of doing our own show came up and we wanted to do something small, but suddenly my manager said we’d better do a Movistar. We put on an amazing show and I carry many good memories with me because it was the presentation of my first album and all my friends and all my family came from Necochea and everywhere. It was a show that people really liked. Maybe it went by too quickly, due to the pressure of waiting for everything to go right.
-Did you like it?
-I liked it but it flew right away. I felt like we went in and out. I think it won’t be the same in Luna. We want to celebrate the year of Movistar. For the setting we go with something new and leave the concept of space and go more on the color side. There’s going to be an arrow shaped catwalk, which is going to be great, and we’re going to have a really big band on stage. We are nine in all: eight musicians and me. There will be guests.
I feel that in my set there are songs that can make you dance, accompany you when you cry, when you are in love or when you are not in love, through thick and thin. Try to convey this: the good times and the bad times. The message is “Everything happens,” which is a phrase I’ve heard recently. Every moment passes. When you’re good, it will happen, and when you’re bad, the same thing happens.
“Today I have another security”
-What do you recommend to an artist who has his first major exhibition?
-Obviously there is no other choice but to be nervous, even if today I have other certainties because after Movistar I did another 80 shows. We’ve been playing the songs for a year now, the band knows all the songs and I feel I’m moving more and more freely.
Beyond that, when it’s your show and you’ve been preparing it for months for your people, there’s a certain amount of extra pressure. So to anyone doing their first show, the only thing I can say is try hard and find out how to sound better by asking people in the music business. And that you enjoy it. The best gift you can give people, beyond the great exhibition, is knowing how to connect and stand next to people.
-That Movistar Arena was your first show ever or the first one that big?
-With the band we had only done two or three shows before. The band was very recent. I had played several times with songs before but had stopped playing live because it was a mess. We fell without headphones in ear, we used the venues microphones and sometimes they didn’t work. It was all very rustic! When we professionalize everything, we put the band together and really tried to make it right for Movistar. We had a goal and we did things right.
-Did you like the life of tours, buses, hotels and planes, or did it burn you out?
-I liked it. Sometimes it is tiring to spend several months in this plan, without being able to spend time at home. The day before part of traveling, being 10 hours before air travel or checking into a hotel is exhausting. It takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. We fall, we touch and we go! Sometimes it is very tiring, but other times you are in the Humor tour and spend 20 days straight playing.
I think you have to find the balance. Last year we got a taste for playing and spent six months, without spending even a day in the studio. It was crazy. We stopped in January and realized it was too much, so this year we will do it but we will also do other things, to balance. And if we don’t spend time in the studio we have nothing new to play!
Five years after the boom
-You’re celebrating five years of your first song.
-Yes. A couple of weeks ago we celebrated five years of Excuse me. Crazy.
-What did you dream of achieving with that theme?
-The truth is that nothing. It was the first song we did together with the Big One, we were both in Necochea, each on our own, and he insisted I upload it, but I didn’t want to because I didn’t have the money to make a video and I didn’t want to release it without a video . He loaded it and after a month and a half it exploded. That’s where it all started and we had to juggle trying to learn and adapt to this gigantic world of music, which is always changing.
-Did you imagine having such a powerful first theme?
-You always have the idea of wanting to hit it in your mind, but you never know how it will happen. I think all artists have a theme that gets out of hand. Some are growing step by step, but I had to start right. I didn’t dream it; it just happened. Today, fortunately, it’s been five years and I’m amazed at everything we’ve learned and how we’re doing now.
-How are you doing with social networks? Because they helped you see knowledge, but they can also criticize you for anything.
-Now I’m not that involved, but when I started I used to look at the networks and the number of plays all day, refreshing the page. Read 20 positive comments and when the negative comment appears, you grab it and hit it badly. At the time, I was impressed with what was being said and tried to make each new topic more familiar than the previous one. It took me a while to get rid of it and I suffered a lot from it.
-Has it helped to be in contact with other musicians or did you not know so many of the scene yet?
-At the end of 2018 I started collaborating with Lit Killah, for example, after the songs started working. It was the first of the environment with which I started collaborating. We shot together and I understood what the scene was like. I came from a quiet place like Necochea and fell here. Then it was quite a process and now I play at home.
-Later you lived with Lit, Rusherking and Tiago in the mythical house of Nuñez.
-That was Lit’s idea, who one day said he wanted to move into a house with other artists, to grow everyone on the musical side. She also told Tiago, who I was just arguing with, and then Rusher joined. He was kind of crazy at first, but then the artists started falling out and we made moves that had never happened before, like joining artists who were arguing and they became friends and came up with a song together. Artists who would never collaborate ended up collaborating.
-It was a song factory!
-Yes. It was a cradle of projects and set sail, where rappers dropped in every day to freestyle. We would stream and show when we all had dinner together. We didn’t do a lot of shows or tours yet. We were in the studio all day, seeing what we could do and collaborating with each other. There was a very strong continuity of work and many songs came out.
Therefore, before removing Princess I had already recorded half of my album, but I composed for the other guys and hadn’t released my music yet. I always collaborate. I have many businesses and I like making songs with others.
Do you miss that moment?
-It’s quite strange, but it would be difficult to repeat it because we are all older and with our projects on track. It’s hard for us to coincide to get together for dinner! Maybe one day we’ll all go somewhere else and end up living together again. It was a nice experience.
The current landscape
-Are you impressed by the fact that today there are so many artists filling stadiums in such a short time?
Yes, it’s very crazy. There are also many other upcoming artists. There’s a new breed of musicians that are breaking it and they had artists like us for reference. For example, those of RKT and turreo, which was something very big, proposed something that caught on in Argentina and spread to other countries.
On the other hand, we had no reference here and had to look to J Balvin and Daddy Yankee. Argentina is a place where music is inside us and more and more 15-year-olds, of all genres, are going out and rocking it. It’s time to set sail.
-What is your greatest talent, the area where you feel most confident?
-My forte is writing lyrics. Regardless of how the voice puts it, the letters will have more life.
Source: Clarin