A few years ago, Nick León made a hit. Not a hit hit, like a Drake/Sabrina/Taylor hit, but a hit in certain circles. His single Xtasis, made with the Venezuelan producer DJ Babatr, was one of the defining club tracks of 2022. Named track of the year by Resident Advisor and a staple at parties throughout the summer and autumn, it launched León from his status as one of Miami’s most interesting underground DJs into the international club circuit.
“It was like, we’re hitting the ground running – we’re gonna be touring and DJing all the time, and there was this mission of spreading the music that so many people have been playing already, from Latin America and the US,” León recalls of this period, sweating through his tie-dye T-shirt in an east London cafe in June.
The problem? León didn’t necessarily even see himself as a club producer. “For as long as I’ve been making music, there’s been two paths in parallel – production work, because I come from that world making rap beats and doing production for artists, and then I had my electronic side quest,” he says.
As Xtasis was coming out, he was preparing to lean further into production – he had just worked with Spanish pop star Rosalía on her generational 2022 record Motomami, and signed a publishing deal off the back of it. Next minute, he was deep in the scene, and beginning to feel like he was “dumbing myself down, playing too four-on-the-floor, not taking any risks” in comparison to how he used to DJ in Miami. “I was a little worried about where I was going in the club world, being in Europe so much. I was getting boring, losing my edge.”
Burnt out, León committed the cardinal sin of any working DJ: he parted ways with his agent and took some time off touring in order to work out what Nick León music should actually sound like. The result is A Tropical Entropy, a muggy, magical debut album that synthesises every facet of León – pop producer, experimental club wizard, maker of heaving, skewwhiff beats – and acts just as much as mission statement as it does a survey of Miami, a city that’s far too often represented in culture as either a 0.1-percenter’s playground or an ungovernable bed of sin.
“With this project, I wanted to recalibrate a little bit,” he says. “I think I have a weird entry point to dance music that’s not the same as a lot of my peers. I’m learning that Berghain is important from my friends, but I don’t care, you know? I really like being in the studio.”
León grew up in Fort Lauderdale, a city north of Miami, to a Colombian mother. He started making music as a teenager using a copy of FL Studio, a digital audio workstation, that was on his brother’s laptop. He began producing beats for rappers in Miami, running sessions in his family home. During a brief relocation to Boston in the early 2010s, León was introduced to the experimental club music bubbling up around the east coast. It inspired him to start incorporating club sounds into his productions, landing on an irresistible fusion of Latin traditions such as reggaeton and dembow with house and ambient techno. León quickly became associated with a group of artists and labels around the world – Mexico City label Naafi, Colombian label TraTraTrax, ambient reggaeton producer DJ Python – who were fusing similar styles.
León describes the “mission” of that scene as one of garnering respect for regional club styles in a world that is notoriously gatekept and, too often, racist and inconsiderate in the ways it either excludes or gentrifies sounds from outside the western world. It’s ongoing, he says.
“It feels way better than it did even two, three years ago in terms of like … OK, artists from Latin America are getting booked – are promoters putting their money where their mouth is and paying for visas? Or is it just a hype moment?” he says. “Touring in Europe certainly gave me more perspective on the thing, because you play parties and you’re either the wildcard or they’re mad that you’re not playing more reggaeton.”
As it turned out, taking time away from the underground club circuit – and betting on the idea that DJs can still find a meaningful, viable career outside its infrastructure – proved fruitful. Last year, León released Bikini, a collaboration with Danish musician Erika de Casier that became an indie-pop crossover, and was hailed by many publications as one of the best songs of the year.
When León made the song, it gave him a blueprint for how he wanted A Tropical Entropy to sound – complex but pop-leaning, taking in the multitude of dance styles that have shaped him. “Bikini felt like one of the first times I was able to get an idea out that really showcases all of the different music that I like,” he says. The mission with this album is nobody’s but his own, he says: “I very much want to hear more pop music that sounds like this.”
• A Tropical Entropy is out now on TraTraTrax
