That’s because the pop star, née Juan Luis Londoño Arias, began recording music at 16 and quickly rocketed to the top of the music charts in Colombia and then across Latin America, especially propelled by his success on YouTube. Maluma often gets compared to Justin Bieber to explain him to gringo audiences. And in this very contradictory and chaotic time, when a lot of people are looking for fun and fantasy, he might be just the guy to seize the moment. But his old-school Latinx lover image - a kind of reggaeton-era Ricky Martin with an Insta-thirst twist - has helped Maluma build his own audience. Other Latinx musical artists, like J Balvin and Bad Bunny, dominate streaming much more than Maluma does, and they have achieved bigger success on the US pop charts.
(It’s not all that hard to see why.) Leaning into his hotness and his fans' thirst has organically turned Maluma into a social media king (accruing 50 million Instagram followers) and YouTube music video star (with 23 million followers). Fans asked him to snap their necks, offered to carry his baby, and asked to suck his feet. Thirst Twitter quickly zeroed in on the Colombian star’s charms.
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Last month, horniness connoisseur Calvin Klein included him in its new underwear campaign, and he gave the full Maluma: sticking his tongue out in his signature style, half playful, half smoldering. Gay Twitter and his fanbase, the Malumaniatikas, are obsessed with his every move. The shirtless gym videos he posts on Instagram regularly get millions of views. From the way he crosses his legs to the way he kisses his mom, his social media feed is almost always news. It’s been nearly a decade in the making he’s been giving us bops and body since his musical debut as a Medellin teenager in 2011. Maluma may not be the biggest name in the US pop landscape yet, but he certainly has a big following. Last week, Maluma’s performance during the One World: Together at Home charity broadcast alongside stars like Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, and Jennifer Lopez opened up a new audience for him - as evidenced by the number of viewers who Shazam’d his rendition of the song “Carnaval.” (After interviewing him, King tweeted, “I TOTALLY get what all the fuss is about.”) She was asking about a cryptic post on his Instagram, featuring the letters ADMV, which he revealed was an initialism for the title of his new single, the low-key acoustic ballad ” Amor de Mi Vida.” But King might as well have been alluding to the way 26-year-old Maluma has been teasing - and thirst-trapping - his way into the awareness of US audiences. “You’re teasing us, you’re teasing us,” Gayle King told Colombian pop star Maluma in a CBS interview last week.