The World Cup Scores a New Star with Pop/R&B Artist Trinidad Cardona
Internet fans may have nicknamed him “Trinidaddy,” but Trinidad Cardona calls himself more of a “mad scientist.” All alone in his Los Angeles laboratory aka bedroom on the Eastside, you’ll find him scheming and plotting his next moves to take over the world – the pop and R&B music world, obviously!
We’re just gonna call Cardona a viral pop super-sensation. He burst onto the scene in 2017 with "Jennifer" before enjoying global success a year later with his follow-up hit single "Dinero," a sexy ode to toxic romances with its Miami-flavored rumba horns and driving beat. The track was revived in 2021, as a #1 TikTok chart phenomenon with over 65 million streams. Cardona exploded virally again this past spring and summer with "Love Me Back," a soaring torch song with hypnotic percussion and shimmering synths that garnered over 3 billion views and 400,000 creates on TikTok.
Not only is Cardona consistently producing viral hits, he made music – and sports – history as the first emerging bilingual, multi-cultural, next gen artist to launch the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ Official Soundtrack with the single "Hayya Hayya (Better Together)," featuring Afrobeats icon Davido and Qatari singer-songwriter Aisha.
The song is the first in a selection of soundtrack singles that will hit the airwaves as anticipation grows for the start of World Cup on November 21st. Powerful and uplifting, the track draws on R&B and reggae influences and is part of FIFA’s new entertainment strategy to connect with audiences worldwide through the shared passions of football (soccer) and music.
We catch up with Cardona below about his ongoing journey to stardom and what else he’s got planned up his (mad scientist lab coat) sleeves. Enjoy!
You’re from Phoenix, and now your home is here in LA. How has the transition been and how have the differences between the two cities changed/affected you?
It’s a lot less diverse [in Phoenix], less going on, a bunch of desert landscape. It hasn’t changed me or anything too much, because I’ve been moving around since I was younger. When I was 17, I moved to Dallas, and then I moved to Atlanta when I was 19. I lived in LA when I was 18 for a little bit, I was in Miami for six months, maybe, and then back to LA … so I move around a lot in general! The culture here is super chill. I’m always somewhere new, always somewhere different.
What was the reason behind all the moves?
Music, man. I left school and I was like, yo, I’m going to do music however I can. If I have to move to Dallas with this man I just met, and then, boom, that sounded crazier than it actually was, bro, he was my manager. [laughs] But I moved to Dallas with this dude, and then after that, someone else at the company was, like, come live with me in LA, and then, boom, did that. And he was a terrible guy, mean, mean guy, took all my money. And then I went homeless for a little bit. And then I was back in Phoenix, and some dude was like yo, you can come rock with me in Miami, so I went to Miami for six months, ended up back in LA. I was just chasing my music career honestly, wherever it took me.
I wanna keep things enjoyable for all listeners, all ages, any generation
You self-describe as an R&B/pop artist and your music as “urban pop.” How would you describe “urban pop”?
It’s, like, pop music with a lot more Black and Latin influences, things of that nature. I make a lot more pop music and stuff now, I’d say, because pop music is just catchy music that gets in people’s heads, whether that’s an Afro beat or a Latin-type beat like "Dinero." I’m just making music that’s catchy. I might make a rock song. I just started singing opera for part of my vocal lessons. I just do whatever I feel like, to be honest, and I just hope people enjoy it. But I mostly like doing pop-oriented stuff.
You went viral at 18 years old when you were more of a rapper. Do you miss being a rapper and would you ever return back to those roots?
Nah, not really. I mean, I do little rap songs with the homies, nothing crazy, but I feel like I didn’t have much substance as a rapper because, like, I was an only kid, I was inside all the time, I wasn’t really out, I wasn’t really too social, so it was like I don’t got much to rap about, you know? And plus, I wanna keep things family-friendly. I wanna keep things enjoyable for all listeners, all ages, any generation, so I just felt like rapping was too niche for what I was doing. I wanted to hit a wider audience, and I felt like pop music was a good way to do that. I can dabble back into rapping, Hip Hop, melodic stuff when I feel like it, just for fun, but for now I’m just focusing on pop music.
Social media, especially TikTok, has been such a big part of your success and journey as an artist. Can you share more of your thoughts on that?
TikTok is a very big tool, creatives would be silly not to utilize it. It’s a big help, I think it’s genius. I feel like a lot of stuff centers around TikTok now, it’s like every meeting will be TikTok-oriented, “how can we get TikTok TikTok TikTok …” It’s cool because you don’t always have to be, like, the popular person doing 100 posts a day, sometimes the most random video or one-off can go viral, just like it did with "Dinero" and "Love Me Back."
It’s not like I sat there posting 100 times a day doing special skits, I just got on camera and lip synced to the song I made for 10 seconds and someone was like, yo, I like that let me make a video to it, and then a million other people are like, yeah, I like that too, so it’s a really cool tool in that sense. And I think at this moment it’s culturally very important, it’s a good way for everybody to see something new.
The one thing I don’t like, it’s like, yo, one day your numbers aren’t as high as they were yesterday and then, boom, all of a sudden it’s like panic, you know? Oh, is things going down, are things falling off, I need to do this, I need to do that. That’s the one thing I don’t like about something like TikTok or any social media, really. It can mess with your head.
My favorite track is the one you did for the World Cup. This is huge! Please tell us how this incredible opportunity came together.
There’s gonna be a bunch of other [songs], [mine] is just the first one that came out. I got the opportunity because my friend, [producer] RedOne, called me up and was like, yo, could you record this for me and I was like, yeah, of course, why not, and it turned out to be a really, really cool song. There’s Davido and Aisha on there, and I added my own little pieces here and there. I was just honored to be on the song. Aisha was really, really cool, it was nice to meet an artist form Qatar. Very honored to be part of the World Cup.
Who else is on your wish list of collaborators?
There’s so many, honestly, it’s so hard to choose when you have all these favorite artists. On the more underground side, I been really wanting to work with Pi'erre Bourne who makes really cool beats, I been wanting to work with something like a Harry Styles, I think that would be fun. I think me and Bad Bunny would go great.
Thanks Trinidad! - Hype
