Cazzu Makes Billboard Albums Chart Debut with ‘Latinaje’: ‘It Fills Me With Great Satisfaction!’

Cazzu has a lot to celebrate this week with the arrival of her debut studio album, Latinaje, on the Billboard charts. The album comes in at Nos. 4 and 48 on the Top Latin Pop Albums and Top Latin Albums rankings, respectively (charts dated May 10).

“I’m a bit ignorant about managing badges or when one earns medals, it’s a strange feeling,” Cazzu tells Billboard. “But being on the charts makes me very happy because I think that basically determines that people are liking the album, so it fills me with great satisfaction.”

Latinaje was released April 24 on Dale Play/Rimas and marks her first entry on any album chart after multiple visits across other songs charts. The 14-track set launches with 3,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending May 1, according to Luminate. Most of the LPs opening sum stems from streaming activity, which translates to 4.5 million official on-demand streams of the set’s songs.

“The album is full of moments like with [the album’s first single] ‘La Cueva’ which I didn’t want to release,” says Cazzu. “It took a lot of work from my friends and my team to convince me it was a beautiful song. It was decided at the last minute. We shot a video, I didn’t like it, we shot another one in three days, we made a super-quick announcement, and the next day it came out. And well, I was amazed at how well the song did.”

In addition to giving her a No. 27 high on the multi-metric Hot Latin Songs chart, which blends streams, radio airplay and digital sales into its formula, “La Cueva” debuted and peaked at No. 2 on Latin Digital Song Sales in January.

“The recording process was so long,” Cazzu remembers. “It was supposed to be an album of collabs, but we changed our minds. It told one story, but it ended up telling another. ‘Con Otra,’ for example, was supposed to be a merengue, and we ended up making a cumbia.”

“Con Otra” is the latest hit on the songs charts for Cazzu, as the tune rallies 45-29 on the overall Latin Airplay chart, after launching at No. 36 on the April 6-dated ranking. The song marks Cazzu’s second visit there, following “Tú y Tú,” with Los Ángeles Azules and Santa Fe Klan, which landed at No. 5, her first top 10. That collaboration was a major achievement for Cazzu, earnin a No. 1 hit on the Regional Mexican Airplay chart, where it ruled for one week in 2023.

Elsewhere, Latinaje opens at No. 48 on the all-genre Top Latin Abums, for the Argentinian’s first appearance there.

About the song she relates with the most: “I love ‘Odiarme,’ it has a lot of Cazzu, of that romantic darkness that I love, but ‘Engreído’ has strong trap lyrics, and the music is a bolero, it is a very beautiful collaboration.” The song is her first pair-up with Venezuelan Elena Rose.