Arturo Hilario
El Observador
Natalia Alexandra Gutiérrez Batista is someone you may not be familiar with, but if you’ve happened to hear about musician Natti Natasha, they’re one in the same. Natalia was a Dominican girl who wanted to pursue singing from an early age, and Natti would be her eventual stage name and alter ego, the embodiment of that childhood dream come true.
Now fans can take a peek behind the stage and into her life with a docuseries exploring her rise to fame.
First gaining exposure in 2012 as a feature on Don Omar’s “Dutty Love”, Natasha came to the United States undocumented and fought tooth and nail to pursue a music career. Since then all of her perseverance, some good management and a bit of luck have skyrocketed her in the realm of music, specifically the Reggaeton genre, amassing a multitude of popular singles and hit collaborations with the likes of Latino artists Becky G, Maluma, and Thalia.
With millions upon millions of plays a month, Natasha is a bona fide star who interacts with her fans on stage with her riveting presence, and on Instagram, posting curated posts to her 34 million followers. Besides those two avenues, Natti Natasha has rarely allowed the public access to her private life.
Now though, fans can get an intimate and behind the scenes look at the life of Natalia for the first time in “Everybody Loves Natti”, a Prime Video docuseries that brings down the curtain of privacy for an all-access look at the person behind the stardom.
Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Natasha to look at why and how the show was made, and how juggling her new motherhood and stardom, as well as facing down critics’ doubts and assumptions, put a lot of fuel into her wanting to step out of the spotlight and under the microscope at this point in her life. So continue reading to find out why “Everybody Loves Natti”.
To start off, how did “Everybody Loves Natti” come to be? Where did the concept come from and how long were you thinking about doing a project like this?
It was very, I would say spontaneous, because we had the offer, but I hadn’t been thinking about it at the moment. I’m very private. I was very private about my life and everything. I always focused more on releasing music but so many things were going on at the moment. The pandemic had gone on. I tried to get pregnant. I couldn’t, but then I was able to. And then I saw myself working on “Nattividad”, my album, and I just said, “if I show the world everything that I’m going through right now, I feel like it would be the best way of just telling the story, just like it is – if they get it directly from the source, obviously, me.”
And that [involved] opening the doors of my home, so that’s the moment when I said, “let me go back and let me talk to Mona Scott,” who is the producer. She didn’t know that I was even with Raphy [Natti’s longtime manager, Pina Records’ founder Raphy Pina]. She did not know I was pregnant, so little by little, it was surprises for her also. So that’s why I took the decision of doing it because I feel the fans needed to know the whole story from me, every process.
I wanted the world to see, also [people] said that I wasn’t going to be able to work or be in the music industry because I was going to have a family. I was going to have a daughter. And that’s another stereotype that I said, I want to show the world how I did it, and that’s how it came about. So there’s a lot of things in there, so if you ask me about a concept, I would just say that it’s my life.
Thank you. And it seems like it was filmed partly during the pandemic, right?
It was in the middle of everything, yeah.
So how was that experience of getting filmed during that time and allowing a production crew into your life?
It was like in the middle of the pandemic already, and it’s horrible because it’s still going on for everyone. So like I said, I was going through that bad moment like everyone else, and I tried to get pregnant, and I couldn’t. So it was a very dark moment. And when I saw this light that I could get pregnant, to me, it was a blessing. So at that moment when they’re recording me, I’m just very thankful. So it was actually a good feeling to have people around.
Everyone was taking care of themselves. It was with a lot of protection; it was actually very very hard to do it. But the people that were around, they turned into family because they were here every single day. But it was a good feeling having people around. Different from the beginning of the pandemic. But it was definitely a good turnaround.
Why do you feel it’s important that at this point in your life, that people get to know you outside of the stage and in your more personal life?
Well, because I have always been very private, and this was a moment that I didn’t feel like I needed to [hide]. I never felt that I needed to hide anything anyways, but I wanted people to really just get to know me more, like I said, in this beautiful moment in my life, in this beautiful process. I’m pregnant, I’m working on my album, and I just feel like I was working on two amazing projects at once.
And there’s no better way to give back to my fans and to tell them how everything went about, the true story about everything, not what people say out there about Natti Natasha. I feel like they deserve it also, so that’s one of the main reasons I did it.
At one point in the show interviews, you say that you feel like you’re “breaking the glass ceiling”. I wanted to know if you could expand on that what that means in terms of your career, being a mom and being a Latina.
I mean, with everything personal and professional, when the people found out I was pregnant, I got a lot of attacks, I guess, on social media. Like, “How are you going to be this reggaeton artist, this pop artist and still be pregnant and still be Natti Natasha?” And to me, I was like, “I am ready to just stop that stereotype.” So that’s what I did. And I recorded it and I showed the world. To me, it was very important to do that.
And my final question, Natti, what do you hope audiences watching “Everybody Loves Natti” take away from it and who you are?
I just want them to see me. I want them to feel like they’re family. I want them to feel like they’re in my home because literally, doors open. They’re all welcome. I want them to get to know me, to really really get to know me, not for what people say, but for who I truly am, and that’s what they’re going to see.
“Everybody Loves Natti” is now streaming on Prime Video.
