While much of the industry continues to construct personas, NUP seems determined to do the exact opposite: dismantle them. Between recording studios, runways, and sessions with some of the biggest names in Latin music, the Colombian creative has made sensitivity, observation, and rebellion the core of his artistic vision.
Some producers enter the industry strategically. Others, out of obsession. And then there are those who are simply born into it, even if it takes them years to understand that this was their destiny. Alejandro, better known as NUP, belongs to that last category: a creative formed amidst symphonic bands, coffee plantations, snowstorms in New Jersey, and studios where he learned by silently observing some of the most important architects of contemporary Latin music.
Today, his name appears behind songs and sessions linked to figures like Shakira, Ricky Martin, J Balvin, Ryan Castro, Beéle, Nicky Nicole, and Reykon. But reducing NUP to just a producer would be a gross oversimplification of a figure who understands music, fashion, and identity as a single artistic conversation.
“For me, art is expression. Music and fashion are natural expressions of the soul, the body, movement, and feeling,” says NUP. “Even though they are completely different businesses, for me they come from the exact same place.” Before NUP existed, there was Alejandro: a boy raised among mountains, fields, and artistic discipline. His childhood was spent between a symphony band where he played trumpet for almost a decade, karate classes, swimming, and long periods in the countryside watching his grandparents plant coffee.
While Medellín was beginning to become the epicenter of Latin reggaeton, Alejandro watched as his close circle began to transform into protagonists of a new industry. His cousin became Reykon. His neighbor ended up becoming a music producer. The names around him were beginning to shift towards figures like Karol G, Sky Rompiendo, and Bull Nene. Medellín was changing. And he still hadn’t found his place.
“I didn’t have to look for the circle. Life handed it to me,” he says. “I saw how everyone was starting to take off, but I still didn’t do anything. I was terrified to take action.”
The story of NUP doesn’t really begin in Medellín. It begins in New Jersey, during one of the most aggressive snowstorms the East Coast of the United States has ever seen.
After quitting his job with Reykon, he decided to travel alone to New York with the idea of studying music production. He had a plan: work in a Peruvian restaurant, save money, and get into a sound engineering school. But nothing went as expected. The job never materialized. He couldn’t stay at his aunt’s house. He ended up surviving on temporary jobs, washing cars in the winter, loading trucks, and sleeping wherever he could.
For weeks on end, he was trapped by snowstorms in New Jersey, practically alone, with an old computer, two batteries, and intermittent electricity.
And there, locked away in the middle of winter, NUP was born. “That’s where I learned to make music,” he says. “I read books during the day, charged the batteries, and at night, when the power went out, I lit candles and started making music until the computer shut down.”
The image seems straight out of an indie film: a Colombian lost in New Jersey learning music production in the dark while historic storms raged outside. But for him, that moment remains the exact point where everything changed.
“Only when I was completely alone, far from everything, did I understand that this was my calling.”
When he returned to Medellín, the city was already operating under different rules. His friends were no longer just friends: they were entrepreneurs, producers, artists, and executives in an industry that was exploding globally. It was then that a fundamental figure in his development appeared: Sky Rompiendo.
Although many today might interpret the relationship as formal mentorship, NUP describes it differently: extreme observation. “Sky taught me how to make music without even knowing he was teaching me,” he says.
For years, he accompanied Sky on sessions, trips, and creative processes in cities like Miami and Orlando, closely absorbing the dynamics of international producers and songwriters linked to global hits. “I was the quiet one sitting next to him, absorbing information,” he recalls. That experience shaped his career until one day Sky asked him a defining question: whether he wanted to stay as a ghost producer or forge his own path. NUP chose to forge his own career, even if it meant starting alone.
Paradoxically, one of NUP’s greatest privileges also became one of his greatest challenges: working alongside some of the biggest names in the industry without any prior experience.
