Alex Cuba Is Nelly Furtado's Latino Timbaland

Posted on Sep 14th 2009 5:00PM by Sergio Elmir
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Alex Cuba has been pretty busy for the past year since the crossover success of his second album, 'Agua de Pozo,' sent the Cuban-Canadian touring across Europe, Asia and North America. But not too busy to work with one of the world's biggest pop stars, Nelly Furtado, on her first Spanish-language album, 'Mi Plan.'

"We met through Daniel Stone, who plays drums with Nelly," Cuba tells Spinner. "Daniel was playing drums for me and he invited his friend from Nelly's band, James Bryan, to one of the shows and we started a relationship that night. The next thing you know, Nelly is writing in James Bryan's studio and she said, 'I would love to hear this in Spanish' and he said, 'Have you heard of Alex Cuba?' and gave her a CD."

Furtado loved the Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter's CD so much she immediately sent him one of her songs for him to work on. Soon he was enlisted as a full Timbaland-style collaborator on her latest project.

"Nelly saw the whole album coming together that way," Cuba said. "So we started writing together. She kept rescheduling and we did five different sessions of two to three hours each. We ended up writing nine songs together and eight songs ended up on the album, including the title track, 'Mi Plan.'"

Slated for release on Sept. 15, Furtado's Spanish-language debut has already scored a measure of success thanks to the lead single, 'Manos al Aire,' reaching No. 1 on the Latin Radio Charts in the US and Puerto Rico, as well as in several Latin American countries. For Alex Cuba, the real payoff was getting to work with Furtado.

"It's a very natural vibe between Nelly, James and me. Nothing was forced and everything was cool," says Cuba. "We ended up loving each other and we all agreed that we could continue writing a lot of music together. We're talking about touring together. I know she's starting to tour as soon as the album is released, mainly in South America."