Natti Natasha Will Never Be Boxed In. Her New Bachata Album Is Proof

As a teen growing up in the Dominican Republic during the early 2000s, Natti Natasha — or Natalia Alexandra Gutierrez as she’s known to her family and friends — sang into hair brushes, imagining herself performing alongside artists like Romeo Santos, the frontman of the iconic bachata group Aventura. 

“They revolutionized bachata for DR. To me, they were like the Dominican version of The Beatles. They would do shows in Santiago, and the girls would run behind them. The way they were making people feel, I thought, maybe one day I will be able to do something like that,” Natti tells Refinery29 Somos.

Today, Natti celebrates the full-circle moment she always dreamed of. On February 7, she released Natti Natasha en Amargue, an album produced and written by the “King of Bachata” himself, Dominican-Puerto Rican Santos.

“It amazes me that he believed in me to do a whole project and that he felt like I was the right person to carry that responsibility, and I do it with all the pride in the world,” she shares. “Remembering everything that I went through when I was a kid and how I admired him makes me feel so much more grateful right now.”

Natti Natasha en Amargue marks Natti’s fourth studio album and her first fully bachata tracklist, featuring just one collaboration, “Yo No Comparto” with Puerto Rican-Dominican singer Ozuna. Natti says this album is her “offering of love and gratitude to the Dominican Republic and all those who have embraced bachata,” a genre born from the Caribbean country. Natti Natasha en Amargue has been years in the making, with the opening song “Desde Hoy” being the first one Santos wrote and shared with Natti just over three years ago. 

True to bachata’s lyrical history of detailing moments of love, heartbreak, and nostalgia, Natti says she wants listeners to experience the passion and “rawness” behind the music. 

“I hope they feel like they're talking to their therapist, like they can scream to these songs but also feel empowered, and that they’re not alone,” she says. “I feel like music is very much about being able to dig into your feelings.”

While the singer views Natti Natasha as her alter ego, singles from the album like “Quiéreme Menos” draw directly from tough moments she personally experienced. She dedicated the song to Raphy Pina, her fiancé, father to their three-year-old daughter Vida Isabelle, and manager, who returned home after being released from prison in May 2024. The moment of their reunion was captured in the “Quiéreme Menos” music video. Today, she's happy to have him back home. As her lyrics in “Tu Loca” might imply, she’s crazy in love. 

“Oh my God, I feel so much weight off my shoulders. I feel like that was a nightmare and I also learned that real love does break through barriers,” Natti shares, speaking about needing to  wear several hats in leading her businesses, including her music and sparkling rosé brand Tasha, while Raphy was away. “Now I feel like I can concentrate. I never stopped working, but I needed to have my whole team so I could move full speed ahead.”

But Natti has arguably been working “full speed ahead” since she was a kid. As a teen, she joined D’Style, her friends’ reggaeton group where she became the token female singer. DJ Tilo Rock, one of the members’ dad, let them record in his studio and helped them book shows. Natti would sometimes skip class, pretend to go to a friend’s home to study, or sneak out of her parents’ home to play gigs at nightclubs, parties, and even basketball courts. She knew these moments would help her reach her dream career. 

“That structure and those roots helped me start developing discipline and understanding the amount of hours and the amount of work that [this career] takes,” Natti says. “I appreciated it when I heard our songs come on the radio for the first time. I was like, even if it was a local Santiago radio station, to me, it was huge.”

In 2009, Natti moved to the Bronx with hopes of getting her big break. Overstaying her U.S. visa, she lived undocumented for some time, couch-surfing at different friends’ homes and picking up random jobs in between studio sessions, like working in a factory production line. 

“It was scary, but it was worth it,” Natti says. “That experience helped me grow, stay grounded, and build character. It taught me to appreciate everything happening in my life given all the sacrifices I had to make.” 

Natti scored her first big feature three years later with Don Omar on the song “Dutty Love.” But her career soared to new heights when she started working with Pina’s Pina Records label. They worked on some of her most sensational hits, like 2017’s  “Criminal” with Ozuna and 2018’s songs  ”Sin Pijama” with Becky G and “Amantes De Una Noche” with Bad Bunny. With a discography of songs sprinkled across genres from reggaeton and reggae to afrobeats and cumbia, Natti says she refuses to let herself be boxed in. Still, she was nervous about committing an entire album to bachata for the first time, as she did with Natti Natasha en Amargue.

“I wasn’t sure if people were going to like a single-genre album,” she says. “But the only way that I could give people more and myself more without feeling [boxed in] and really enjoy it was going back to my roots.”

With her partner back home and her latest album released, Natti hopes listeners see its completion as a testament to the power of resilience.

“This [album] was completed during a very interesting process in my life. It taught me that no matter what you're going through, if you try to stay positive and find your reasons to get through, which for me my light has always been [my daughter] Vida Isabelle since she was born, you can always make it through the situations you’re in.”

Natti will premiere one of the singles off Natti Natasha en Amargue on February 20, 2025 at the Premios Lo Nuestro Awards in Miami.