Who is Feid? Meet Reggaeton's Next Bad Bunny

Colombian artist Feid is one of Reggaeton’s hottest acts right now. With two Billboard Hot 100 tracks and a world tour in progress, the 30-year-old singer-songwriter is leaving his mark on the global music scene. Feid, whose real name is Salomón Villada Hoyos, started his music career as a songwriter, becoming a regular collaborator with some of the biggest stars in Latin music including J Balvin, Nicky Jam and Prince Royce. But long gone are the days when Feid needed to work for others to shine, as he is now set to headline THE STAGE at this year’s SXSW and begin a 29-city tour around the United States (following the success of his 2022 US tour which sold out in minutes).

While he was getting fame and awards thanks to his songwriting work, the 30-year-old artist was always a performer at heart. His 2016 track “Que Raro” with J Balvin (58M+ Spotify streams) got overwhelming support and made it to the Billboard charts, finally putting him on the map as an artist. “[Feid] always brought something fresh to the table, and I always let him know of his potential,” Balvin told Billboard. Feid soon became a popular face in the Latin music scene but in the past year, he has seen unprecedented growth even beyond the Spanish-speaking world.

Feid went from averaging 11.5M Spotify monthly listeners and 4.8M YouTube daily views a year ago to 37.8M listeners and 15.7M views now. To understand Feid’s exponential growth, we will compare him to his immediate neighboring artists who also make Latin music: Ozuna and Anuel AA. Both artists have established careers and have collaborated in some of Reggaeton’s hottest hits including “China,” “Otro Trago - Remix” and “X - Remix.” At the moment, Ozuna’s most popular track is “Hey Mor” featuring Feid, which has more than 400M Spotify streams and 27M YouTube views since its release last October. Anuel’s most popular track is his latest release “Más Rica Que Ayer” which has garnered almost 15M Spotify streams and 31M YouTube views in its first week.

Out of the three artists, Ozuna has the highest number of Spotify followers (35.9M) however, Feid has experienced the highest growth. Feid had around 470K followers back in March 2021 but now boosts 4M–a growth of more than 700%. On the contrary, Ozuna and Anuel have seen a slim increase in Spotify followers, 32% and 64% respectively during the same time period.

While Feid started his career in Colombia, he soon gained international popularity in other Spanish and non-Spanish-speaking markets. His YouTube top 30 countries by monthly views include the US, Italy, France and Canada. In terms of Spotify monthly listeners, Mexico is his top country with 7.4M and the US comes right after with 4.1M. The US also ranks #2 in his Instagram followers, showing that US fans aren’t only streaming his music but also interested in following his career and personal news.

Feid, who also goes by the moniker El Ferxxo–his alter-ego, has gained popularity thanks to tracks that embrace his Colombian background, in terms of slang and cultural references. “Hey Mor” uses the very-Colombian term “mor” which is short for “amor” (love), while other tracks feature words like “chorro,” “chimbita” and “nea,” all of which might have been foreign even to Spanish-speaking listeners who weren’t Colombian. “I began to be more faithful to who I am and my Colombian roots. At that moment, I opened the coolest door that I’ve ever opened, which was finding my identity and introducing El Ferxxo. It took me a long time to realize that this was what I had to do to really, really connect with people,” Feid told Billboard.

El Ferxxo has also seen a recent spike in popularity on TikTok as many Reggaeton fans are mad at Bad Bunny following dating rumors with Kendall Jenner and turning to listen to Feid instead. “Am I the only one who was Bad Bunny’s biggest fan and is now Feid’s super fan?” a TikTok user said in a video with more than 10K likes. The Colombian artist has also gone viral on social media thanks to dating speculations surrounding his relationship with fellow Colombian Latin star Karol G. Feid’s top 10 viral songs on TikTok have been used in thousands of videos, with the top 3 being “Hey Mor” (823.9K), “CHORRITO PA LAS ANIMAS” (712.6K) and “Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo” (488.2K).

In the past month, Feid had 8% growth in his Spotify monthly listeners while Bad Bunny saw a slight decrease in listeners, -1.55%. While Bad Bunny's streams will probably get back to previous levels soon, it’s clear that this recent Feid craze is here to stay as fans continue to stream the Colombian artist’s music.

This is just the beginning of Feid’s progressive climb to global stardom as he positions himself as one of the most listened-to Latin artists in the world.