The vision has always been clear for Feid, even through the Oakley shades he’s rarely seen without. Standing poolside at a secluded estate in Miami Shores, the 33-year-old international reggaeton sensation effortlessly mogs the camera. He moves through a series of subtle, cool-guy poses: a head tilt, the cross of an arm. A succulent-green towel is draped over his shoulders, and there’s a pair of custom Salomon XT-Pathway 2 sneakers, the first shoe he’s ever creative-directed, on his feet. Feid is someone who has “it” — a quality that’s indescribable but can be summed up in the way everyone on set stops to watch him make minor tweaks in his stance. He isn’t just comfortable in the moment; he is the moment. And you get the sense that this is how he’s imagined it. 

From his early days in Medellín, Colombia, there was a quiet knowing that this — call it transformative influence or viral impact — would be the outcome. “He’s always been hungry for his dream,” says Molo, one of Feid’s assistants and a longtime friend. “It’s difficult to imagine things turning out any other way.” 

Over the past half-decade, Feid — Ferxxo to those who follow him most closely — has exploded into a worldwide phenomenon. He’s a Latin Grammy winner and saw his album Ferxxocalipsis contend for Best Música Urbana Album at last year’s Grammy Awards. Shortly after wrapping on set, he jetted off to Mexico City to host a record-setting installment of his pop-up coffee party series, bringing out more than 50,000 diehards to Plaza de Toros. He has his own Pantone shade to enhance his singular aesthetic — complimenting the iconic mustache, gold tooth, and aforementioned sunglasses.

Even with an extended list of accolades, Feid tries to stay close to the ground. “I’m always trying to be real with people,” he says. “I want to connect in the most authentic way possible.” That desire shines through as we sit shoulder to shoulder on a plush couch, chatting about everything from his career aspirations to the anime he watched growing up (“Dragon Ball was my first love, man”).

Whether through his music, or his signature graffiti tag of a grinning cartoon devil, or the subtle callouts he uses to show his fans he’s thinking of them — during the shoot he turned a belt into an “X,” a gesture to his Ferxxo alter ego — Feid finds ways to pull people deeper into his world. 

Six months before our conversation, a friend happened to mention Feid to me on a casual night out in New York City, calling him the “king of Colombian music.” If I were going to listen to anyone from the region, she told me, it should be him. When I tell Feid this to his face, he grins. “I’ve always been about preserving the legacy of reggaeton and reflecting my heritage,” he says. “That’s a moment when you feel like you’re doing things right.” 

Born Salomón Villada Hoyos, Feid grew up listening to reggaeton greats like Daddy Yankee, mixed with American hip-hop artists such as G-Unit, Wu-Tang Clan, and T-Pain. His dad and sister are both artists, and Feid’s parents encouraged his artistic leanings from an early age, he said. At 15, some of Feid’s high-school classmates asked him to perform on behalf of their campaigns for student government. Seeing the way the crowd responded to him shook something loose. “I was really excited seeing other people get excited by me performing,” he says. “I think that was the fuel.”