Myke Towers has barely taken a break in the past couple of years. Since releasing his game-changing, Latin Grammy-nominated album LYKE MIKE in 2021, the Puerto Rican artist has been going full steam with back-to-back projects. He dropped the anticipated LP La Vida Es Una in 2023 and then quickly followed it up with a sequel of sorts, called LVEU: Vive la Tuya… No la Mí, a few months later. Now, he’s ready for more.
On Friday, Towers is giving fans La Pantera Negra, his latest project and yet another turn in his ever-growing discography. Though LYKE MIKE established him as a hard-as-nails emcee with an endless reverence for hip hop culture, both La Vida Es Una and LVEU: Vive la Tuya… No la Mí took him down a more pop-friendly route, landing hits like the viral chart-topper “LALA.”
“I don’t like to do anything that sounds the same,” Towers tells Rolling Stone. “I feel like I have all these different sides of me that I want to show.”
Some of the songs on La Pantera Negra have been around for a while, lurking from recording sessions during his past two projects. First out of the gate was “Adivino,” the super smash featuring Bad Bunny that debuted at Number 2 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs when it dropped in May. A throbbing, club-inspired collab, the track instantly turned heads because of the two artists’ biting delivery — Towers even spits out a few lines in English. Towers and Bad Bunny had worked together on a bunch of songs before, but Towers was particularly excited about this one. “We’ve done a lot of music, but we always do trap and stuff like that. This one was different, and I was like, ‘Bro, we have to go with this.’ It was the first song I played for him,” Towers remembers.
Once “Adivino” came out, fans quickly began scrutinizing Bad Bunny’s verse, where he says, “You were one of my loves, I was just another ex/Sometimes I laugh reading the texts/Sometimes I laugh, but you give me stress/I don’t know when the interest died/I don’t know if a ‘I love you” is worth the same in English, ha.” People started speculating that the lyrics were about Bad Bunny’s rumored fling with Kendall Jenner. Towers just laughs when the topic comes up: “When he listened to that one, he said, ‘You know exactly why you showed me that first. I’ll take that song.’ And I think he wrote with the heart because he’s saying facts, talking to a girl he’s got on his mind.“
Elsewhere on the album, Towers shows off the different sides of his artistry that have made him one of the most-streamed acts in Latin music. He flirts with reggaeton beats and reminds people of his brash rap style, constantly switching up his flow and delivery. He keeps the features minimal, highlighting only a few artists. “I don’t do too many features but I had a few here: Jay Wheeler, I have a song with him. I got a song with Peso Pluma,” Towers lists off. The other collaborators who do appear are largely rising musicians: There’s NTG, Darrell, Omar Montes, and rising star Yovngchimi, to name a few.
Towers hints that there might be a few additional surprises later on, particularly some that involve a few unexpected producers. But more that anything, he wants the album to show his versatility and how he’s carved out a lane for himself. “I wanted to bring my A-game here,” he says. “All of this keeps proving to people what I can do.”