Rauw Alejandro on Puerto Rico, salsa and working with Pharrell on his new album

MIAMI (AP) — Last year, Puerto Rican superstar Rauw Alejandro was in outer space.

“Playa Saturno,” the 2023 surprise spinoff to his 2022 record “Saturno,” brought his R&B-informed reggaeton to new heights on an extraterrestrial concept album. A year later, and he's completely shifted gears, finding inspiration in classic sounds and imagery, pulling from a '60s and '70s Nuyorican cool — while still doing what he’s always done best: contorting familiar genres into something novel.

Alejandro is releasing his fifth studio album “Cosa Nuestra,” a title borrowed from Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe's 1969 album, on Friday. (There's a sample of Colón and Lavoe's “Qué Lío” in the opening title track.) It marries classic Puerto Rican instruments and genres, like salsa and merengue, with more modern sounds like reggaeton. And it is amplified by a number of inventive samples — like Frankie Ruiz's “Tú Con Él” — and all-star collaborators: Pharrell Williams, Bad Bunny and Feid among them.

Alejandro's created a kind of character for the release, whom he calls “Raúl Alejandro,” a nod to his father and the early migration of Puerto Ricans to New York, which he explored in an interview conducted in Spanish and English ahead of the 2024 Latin Grammys. It has been translated and edited for clarity and brevity.