Penning the blueprint for Ricky Martin's stardom over the past five years gave Robi Draco Rosa enough quiet successes to buy his own studio and record his new own album Mad Love, which will be released on August 26th on Columbia.

Mad Love is Rosa's fifth release, not counting an album recorded with his early-Nineties ensemble Maggie's Dream. But the record may be the best representation of the singer-songwriter-producer's vision, with production that is at times ethereal, ragged and lush, owing more to classic rock & roll of Led Zeppelin than modern pop.

The record took some two years to make, testament to Rosa's perfectionism and creative restlessness. It's the same musical pursuit that caused him to be the first member of Menudo to split, after being told there would be no self-penned songs performed by the teen idol phenomenon. "I tried to write some songs and they were in a different head space," he says, "so I had to quit. I was younger, but it wasn't so different from things that I'm trying to pursue in the studio now. I've never been big on genres -- I'm just a defender of music."

Despite his stint with the famous Puerto Rican ensemble, Rosa's roots are in Long Island, New York. He lived there until his father relocated the family to Puerto Rico when Rosa was twelve. It was soon after that Rosa's uncle landed him the gig with Menudo. "During my first twelve years, my mom was big on R&B, the Beatles, she bought me some beautiful crushed velvet posters of Zeppelin," he says. "And my dad was big on salsa. Every weekend in the basement, the boys would get together and hang out and listen to music. I wasn't allowed in, so I'd hang out in the garage with my dog and listen from there. But when Dad lost his mama, he was like, 'No music in the house! I'm just gonna listen to classical music.' So then it'd be Beethoven over and over. Once I joined Menudo, we traveled the world and that's where I consumed most of the other music."

Rosa ditched the clean-cut Menudo image for an unshaven mug, long hair and tattoos. And he began recording albums informed by those early influences from Beethoven to Zeppelin, mining a more ambitious vein than Menudo's vocal pop, starting with 1994's Frio and 1996's ambitious Vagabundo, with its beautifully gloomy production. While Rosa was regularly engrossed in his own projects, his behind-the-curtain work with a former Menudo mate allowed him the opportunity to create starmaking thunder for Martin's lightning. Rosa wrote or co-wrote nearly all of Martin's 1998 album Vuelve, including the international smash (and Grammy show-stopper) "La Copa de la Vida." Rosa's name was also all over the songwriting credits for Martin's self-titled 1999 English-language recording, including the hit "Livin' la Vida Loca" and the follow-up Sound Loaded.

Writing hits was mostly a way for Rosa to get a foothold to pursue his own sound. He bought and had built his Phantom Vox recording studio in West Hollywood, where he logs most of the time he doesn't spend with family. "I've moved on," he says of working with Martin. "That was a perfect situation. I always love working with my Puerto Rican brothers and sisters. We had a beautiful run." Working at Phantom Vox, he put together Mad Love (only his second album predominantly recorded in English), which perhaps better than any of his previous releases, boils down the music he loves into something his own. Echoes of the classical bombast can be detected in tracks like "Tried to Reach You," which features a string arrangement by Van Dyke Parks, who also worked on a handful of other tracks. "I love orchestras, man," Rosa says. "It just turned out beautiful. Van Dyke Parks is one of the coolest cats around."

Wanting to share his good fortune, Rosa plans to use Phantom Vox to record other artists from around the world. "I just wanna be surrounded by the music," he says. "You gotta see this studio to believe it. A lot of people come by and say it's like a mini-A&M, back in the day. It's just warm like that, like an old 1930s building. I don't really have a plan, man. We'll just show up, create new stuff and look for that sweet sex."

ANDREW DANSBY
(May 9, 2003)