Pitbull has learned valuable lessons from a list of artists.
First there was Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew, who initially pushed Pitbull to turn his gruff-voiced freestyle skills on Miami rap radio.
Then there was Lil Jon, the crunk king who gave Pitbull his first major feature, on the 2002 "Kings of Crunk" album, and produced his debut solo single, 2004's "Culo.
And one mustn't forget Italian beatmakers Nicola Fasano and Pat Rich, whose song "75, Brazil Street" served as the groundwork for Pitbull's 2009 global smash "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)," which in gain to selling 2.6 million copies in the United States (according to Nielsen SoundScan) has racked up nearly 200 million plays on YouTube.
Still, ask this MC - born 30 years ago as Armando Christian Perez in Florida to Cuban-immigrant parents - whom he's looking to for inspiration these days, and it's not a chart-topping producer or an arena-packing rapper. It's Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Video: Pitbull, "Give Me Everything"
"You get to be constantly outdoing yourself," Pitbull says via the sound from Paris, where he's knee-deep in a circle of advancement for his new album, "Planet Pit," due June 21 from Mr. 305/Polo Grounds/J. Following the City of Light, he was off to Germany and the Netherlands. "That's what [Jobs] knew: He had the Mac, but so he did the iPod, so the iPhone and then the iPad. There's always room for improvement."
A self -described entrepreneur who says he envisions music paving the way toward his own marketing firm, Pitbull measures success the way multinational corporations do - which comes as no surprise, given the wide-ranging business he does with blue chip brands like Kodak, Bud Light and Dr Pepper. "I produce music with no boundaries," he says. "There's no particular grade or people or culture I'm trying to target. And every time I make a new audience, that means I'm doing something right."
Two days later "I Know You Want Me" sparked a pop crossover that ultimately drove the call to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, outdoing himself is exactly what Pitbull hopes to accomplish with "Planet Pit," his sixth studio outing and the follow-up to end year's Spanish-language "Armando." Pitbull's most recent English album, "Rebelution," came out in 2009 and has sold 222,000 copies, according to SoundScan. The new 12-track set finds the rapper teaming with an assassins' row of A-list writer/producers, including Dr. Luke and RedOne, as good as guest stars like Enrique Iglesias, Chris Brown and Marc Anthony. Ne-Yo sings the arena-disco hook on the album's current single, "Give Me Everything," which this week stands at No. 2 on the Hot 100; elsewhere, Pitbull recruits Kelly Rowland to endow "Castle Made of Sand" with a gleam of electro-emo melancholy.
No one who's heard Pitbull's string of increasingly high-profile cameos during the final few years - think Iglesias' "I Wish It," Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Bed" and Jennifer Lopez's "On the Floor" - will be appalled by the album's embrace of sleek top 40 sounds - Polo Grounds president Bryan Leach calls it "Black Eyed Peas on steroids" - but "Planet Pit" makes it clear to just what point this performer has smoothed out his attack.
"Pit's like, 'I wanna win, man - what do we make to do?' " says Dr. Luke, who co-produced the pounding "Come N Go" with Benny Blanco. "He knows what he likes and what he doesn't like, and he's not going to do something he's not into. But he definitely strikes me as a winner. You can tell he's got it."
"Pit was onstage at Wango Tango a few weeks ago and mass were on their feet the total time," adds KIIS-FM Los Angeles PD John Ivey, who calls Pitbull one of his top-rated station's defining artists. "I was almost thinking, 'This guy is printing money.' "
The musical goal for "Planet Pit," Pitbull says, was "to make an album where every book on it could be a single - where every book you go to, you're just like, 'Wow.' " His run for the "wow" factor is simple: "I merely ask myself, 'If I were in a lodge or an area or a stadium, would this hit me go crazy?'" Pitbull credits a childhood spent listening to all kinds of music - "merengue, freestyle, cha-cha, [Miami] bass, hip-hop, dancehall" - with giving him the power to "learn from a bird's-eye view. And that's what allows me to produce music that crosses all genres," he says.
NEXT: "F*ck It: Let's Take a Show Together"
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