Samurai Jay on Bringing ‘A Cool Crossover Between Latin Culture and Our Roots’ to Italy with His Merenguetón Smash ‘Ossessione’
Categoria: Musica
He has spent No. 1 on the Billboard Italy Hot 100 for 16 consecutive weeks.
Por Billboard | 19/06/2026
For Samurai Jay , his connection to Latin music began at home. He credits his mother with shaping his musical tastes from a young age. Born and raised in Naples, Italy, the 27-year-old artist — whose name is Gennaro Amatore — vividly remembers dancing to Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” at age 8. Still, when it came time to pursue a music career of his own, he gravitated toward other genres before finding his way back to those influences. “Here and there, I always made reggaetón songs or songs with the Latin vibe, but I never took that path seriously because I like to do everything,” explains Jay during an interview with Billboard from his home in southern Italy. “I come from metal music. I come from rock music. I [experimented] with every genre…literally.” Today, Samurai Jay is one of the leading voices behind merenguetón in Italy, a genre that fuses the fast-paced rhythms of Dominican merengue with the urban edge of reggaetón. Among the country’s most visible Latin music artists, he has helped introduce the sound to a broader audience through a distinctive style, crafted in collaboration with local producer Vito Salamanca and songwriter Luca Stocco. Samurai Jay is currently the No. 1 artist in Italy, after his high-energy Italian-Latin hit “Ossessione (Obsession)” took over the country early this year. The song, which features merenguetón with Italian lyrics and a few phrases in Spanish, made its official, high-profile debut on stage at the Sanremo Music Festival, which ran from Feb. 24-28, before rolling out globally across all major digital streaming and download platforms. “We were the underdogs of the festival, and then things just blew up,” says Jay, who describes the exposure the track and performance received at the festival as “almost too overwhelming.” “Ossessione” entered the Billboard Italy Hot 100 on March 7, making its debut at No. 5, before climbing to No. 1 spot the very next week and currently still reigning on the chart after 16 weeks on top. On Spotify alone, the song was getting 1.3 million [global] streams per day,” he recalls of the song’s first week of release. “And of course the numbers go down a little bit after Sanremo, but the thing is it’s still [at a] record [high] right now in Italy.” While the artist became a viral merenguetón sensation in 2026, he has spent the past year producing Latin music. In spring 2025, Jay, Salamanca and Stocco — both of whom worked on the production and songwriting for the album — found themselves in the studio doing what they describe to Billboard as “having fun and playing with guitar sounds” and Latin beats. The sessions yielded their first hit, “Halo.” The song laid the groundwork for what would become their signature blend of Italian urban music and merenguetón. “Halo was the song that blew up, and that actually opened the way for what we’re doing today,” explains Jay, who saw the audience’s receptiveness as the compass he needed to move forward musically. “We started to take it