In 1993, a Nuyorican kid named Marc Anthony came out of nowhere and released Otra Nota, a superb salsa album produced by the renowned producer Sergio George. He soon became a superstar, butespecially after marrying Jennifer López in 2004, whom he divorced in 2012his celebrity persona took over and he gradually switched to pop, with commercially successful but artistically uninteresting results. 3.0 marks his first salsa album in 10 years, and his first with George since 2004’s Valió la Pena. Together, they manage to please both romantic and hard salsa lovers, and the album is so good you can (almost) overlook a monumental throwaway like the pop version of album opener “Vivir Mi Vida” (“To Live My Life”). The album rocks hard, and Anthony’s voice is now rugged, which makes things even better. But nothing matches the gorgeous “La Copa Rota” (“The Broken Glass”), a classic Benito de Jesús bolero. This is a liberated, refreshed Marc Anthony. Here’s hoping he listens to the album often, so he can understand, once and for all, that his thing is salsa and bolero. If he can’t take salsa back to ’70s levels of popularity and excellence, no one will.
