Inside Santos Bravos, HYBE’s First Latin Male Pop Group Built on the ‘Desire to Offer Something Different and Disruptive’

On Oct. 21, Santos Bravos volition present its debut show astatine Mexico City’s Auditorio Nacional, playing to a packed assemblage astatine the 10,000-capacity venue — adjacent though its members person yet to beryllium revealed. The performance volition not lone service to unveil the Latin lad band’s 5 members but besides people the culmination of their monthslong rigorous travel to go HYBE’s archetypal all-male Latin group.

HYBE has a agelong past of forming palmy groups, including K-pop giants similar BTS, Seventeen and astir precocious miss popular radical KATSEYE. Yet Santos Bravos is HYBE’S archetypal creator improvement task focused wholly connected Latin talent, expanding the company’s planetary footprint.

Launching nether the South Korean label’s subsidiary, HYBE Latin America — which formed successful 2023 with the acquisition of Exile Music, the euphony part of Spanish-language workplace Exile Content — the instauration of Santos Bravos began successful May. And portion Latin lad oregon mixed girl-boy bands similar Menudo, Timbiriche and RBD person been a large portion of the cloth of Latin music, much modern lad bands person struggled to scope improvement status.

“A batch of the newer lad bands similar CNCO came retired of a accepted format … fans are craving thing bigger that transcends borders,” HYBE Latin America COO Juan Sebastián Arenas says, citing the enactment that scored a fewer hits connected Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs illustration implicit the past decennary but ne'er cracked the Billboard Hot 100. “What we’re doing is simply a operation of cultures. It’s a Korean company, successful Mexico, with kids from 8 antithetic cultures, absorption from Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela — it’s a practice of however large and divers Latin euphony has gotten. It’s a statement.”

The group’s enactment has been documented successful a YouTube world bid (also titled Santos Bravos) that launched successful August. It offers a behind-the-scenes look into the grooming camp, revealing the participants’ ups and downs and evaluations that volition yet find the 5 members who volition marque up the band. There’s besides a Spotify podcast that expands connected the participants’ stories, unrecorded sessions with hundreds of fans successful attendance that diagnostic the boys singing covers oregon archetypal songs, accordant Instagram and TikTok contented and engagement connected HYBE’s social/commerce platform, Weverse.

Arenas is definite Santos Bravos volition win due to the fact that of HYBE’s proven conception of creating and expanding intelligence property. “We are contented producers,” Arenas says. “There’s extent to what we’re doing, and Santos Bravos is built connected that tendency to connection thing that is antithetic and disruptive.”

For showrunner Jaime Escallón (The X Factor, Survivor), who helms the bid alongside Lucas Jaramillo (in summation to moving arsenic the group’s GM), fans are apical of mind. “I’ve worked connected projects with precise circumstantial formats. I did not privation to bash that here,” Escallón says. “You person to cognize who your assemblage is, and we request to beryllium wherever they are. The assemblage we privation to speech to is connected YouTube, Spotify, societal media, and that is however they devour content, how...