In February 2022, Farruko turned his La 167 Tour into a religious experience when he opened up to fans about his beliefs during his Miami concert.
“God loves you just the way you are. We’re all sinners, none of us are perfect,” he told the packed venue. At the show, he didn’t perform his biggest hit to date, “Pepas,” and in fact, asked fans to forgive him for the lyrics, which are about drugs and partying.
Since then, the Puerto Rican artist has steered away from the sultry and provocative lyrics that made him a household name and changed his words to more feel-good ones, as heard in singles like “Nazareno” and “Pasa_je_ro.” The latter is part of the latest Transition album, a 20-track project that highlights his personal journey as well as a new era for his label, Carbon Fiber Music.
“What we are currently living and experiencing with Carbon Fiber, with my life, with Farruko’s life, with the life of Raymond Guevara (formerly and artistically known as Lary Over) and other artists in the company is simply that God has called us to serve him,” Franklin Martinez, the label’s president and Farruko’s longtime manager, tells Billboard. “I can’t tell you what made this change, but I can tell you how it came into my life.”
In the fall of 2021, and in the midst of “Pepas” having major success (it scored Farruko his first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart on the Aug. 28, 2021-dated tally, where it crowned for 26 weeks), Martinez admits he was going through a deep depression that made him feel “empty, completely unhappy, and feeling dead.”
“I made the decision [to change my life] about seven months before Farruko did,” he elaborates. “I tried not to throw it in his face, but instead I told him that I was going through a personal situation and over time I would tell him, but I didn’t even have time to explain to him because God collided with him. That explanation, that trying to convince him, did not come from me, it came from Jesus directly.”
Though Carbon Fiber Music launched in 2014, Martinez had no explanation as to why the label’s literal transition is occurring a decade later, only saying that “God’s timing is perfect.”
Transition is packed with optimistic and motivational messages about relationships, life and praise —backed by hard-hitting hip-hop beats, mid-tempo reggaeton, infectious Afrobeats and dance melodies. In addition to Farruko, it includes Carbon Fiber artists such as Akim and Menor Menor as well as renowned Christian acts like Christian Ponce, Indiomar and Lirios.
Without naming names, Martinez says that some Carbon Fiber artists have left the label since the change in direction while others are supporting it, though he calls it “a constant battle and not easy.”
“We can no longer and don’t want to continue carrying a message of destruction to humanity,” he says. “I don’t want to continue sending messages of violence and sex, I think that God has given us a talent to be able to transmit a message that fills and not a message that destroys.”
He concludes: “‘Transition’ is just that. We are going through a process and this album is a stage that represents what’s happening with the label.”
