Best of Both Worlds

By Carole Buia/Brookville

It's 3 in the afternoon, and after pulling an all-nighter in his home studio, Marc Anthony, 33, appears at his front door--not in one of his signature Armani suits, but barefoot, in striped drawstring pants and a white undershirt, with a Jesus scapular hanging down his neck. His wide opal eyes are beaming. "You want to talk about my new salsa album?" he says. "Nah, you need to hear it."

He skips down stairs leading to the basement of his 10,000-sq.-ft. colonial manor in Brookville on New York's Long Island. Half the basement is being turned into a bar. The other half bristles with expensive, high-tech equipment and is littered with CDs, papers and recent photographs of friends and family taken by his wife, Dayanara Torres, 26, with her new digital camera. For the past three weeks, Anthony has spent entire evenings down here, smoking more Newports than usual, as he gets closer to completing his album. He digs through a pile of CDs. "This album you're about to hear represents me more than anything I've ever done...if I can only find it."

!Al fin! The music starts. He springs up like a grasshopper and dances over his songs' bold introductions. Each song, he explains, has been arranged with a unique instrumental prelude that highlights a particular global sound: an African clay flute scampers across one track, an accordion moans on another, a Uruguayan quijada (jawbone of a donkey) scratches on a third. "We're creating world music in a Long Island basement," he says with a laugh. The song speeds up and, wanting to show off some complicated turns, he asks to have this dance. He's clumsy but an emotional dancer. Then, without warning, he starts in on the chorus of Eres Mia (You Are Mine), a song that he says reminds him of his wife. His pliant and melodious voice rises and falls, conveying a sense of yearning. He sustains a note in space. Though only 5 ft. 7 in. tall and thin as a reed, he carries the voice of a giant.

It's been almost four years since Anthony's last salsa album, the Grammy-winning Contra La Corriente, was released. The fans are restless. "There's no question that he has made salsa more exciting," says Leila Cobo, Billboard magazine's Caribbean and Latin American bureau chief. "Now the challenge will be conquering the mainstream audience." That's exactly what he aimed for during the late-'90s, Ricky-and-Jennifer Latin-crossover blitz. In 1999, after a career singing in Spanish, Anthony released his first English-language pop album. Marc Anthony sold more than 4 million copies internationally; the album's single, I Need to Know, was a Top 10 hit in the U.S. That CD proved he was capable of pop stardom.

If his new CD can win over a wide fan base of both English and Spanish speakers, he may prove something even more significant--that a Latin singer doesn't need a pop album to be a superstar. Ricky and Jennifer merely jumped into the mainstream; Anthony's salsa album could redirect it. But don't call him a crossover. He's allergic to the word. "What did I cross over from?" he asks. "I'm as American as anybody. I was born in your backyard."

Born Marco Antonio Muniz (and named after the famous Mexican singer) in New York City, Anthony was raised by his Puerto Rican emigre parents in East Harlem. His father--a frustrated musician who held three jobs just to put food on the table--used to gather his musician friends on weekends for drinks and impromptu singing. Until it was time for his duet, four-year-old Anthony would scurry underneath the men's legs and offer to shine their shoes. His father would stand him on top of the kitchen table, and the two would sing El Zorsal or Hidos de la Mente, the only songs Anthony knew. In elementary school, he recalls, "whenever I sang--maybe because I had to concentrate so hard--I'd lose my embarrassing stutter."

By high school, a long-haired Anthony had the Chinese symbol for "singer" tattooed on his right arm and was hanging out in nightclubs, befriending DJs and producers who were quick to capitalize on his talent--but all too happy to ignore his gawky look. He sang backup and wrote for groups like Menudo and Sa-Fire; he was even paid as a "phantom voice" (a la Milli Vanilli) for a number of pretty boys with record deals. "It used to eat me up that they'd land a deal and couldn't sing," recalls Anthony. At 17, with no deal of his own in sight, he heeded his mother's advice. "You'll never make money in music," she would say. "Give up and join the Air Force like your brothers." Two weeks before he was scheduled for boot camp, his manager called with a record contract. It took $10,000 in legal fees to release him from his commitment to serve.

Anthony went on to make a number of forgettable albums. Then, one day, while he was stuck in traffic, a Juan Gabriel ballad titled Hasta Que Te Conoci came on the radio. "That song just hit me," Anthony says. The tune was rejiggered into a salsa groove. Anthony's version of the song became a staple on Spanish music stations. Before long, Anthony was one of the biggest stars in the Spanish-speaking world. To this day, he continues to reincarnate ballads into danceable salsa hits.

Anthony's new salsa CD will be released this fall by Sony Discos. The label gave Anthony complete autonomy as executive producer without hearing a single note until it was delivered. It didn't even question his decision to tap Juanito Gonzalez as his co-producer. Gonzalez, 33, a Manhattan School of Music graduate, has played keyboard in Anthony's band for the past eight years. "I noticed that whenever we toured, Juanito always took this big duffel bag with him," says Anthony. "Finally, one day I was like, 'What are you carrying around in there?' And he had all these CDs!" Gonzalez was collecting sounds from all the countries the group had visited. Anthony had an almost identical duffel at home. Immediately, Anthony knew he had to work with Gonzalez, who is said to have "an ear and a half for music."

A relative newcomer to production, Gonzalez earned his stripes playing with many old-school salseros. "Throughout the process," says Gonzalez, "our goal was to master simplicity." Not only have the two mastered it, but they've also expanded salsa into new dimensions. For example, Amarte de Lejos, which begins with an unorthodox bombardment of techno (yes, techno), is bridged by hollow echoes of a vibra-slap (a percussive instrument) that then fuse into a more traditional tropical arrangement.

Hedging his bets, Anthony is also finishing a new English-language pop CD, for which he co-wrote more than half the songs. Two of them, Love Can't Get Any Better and She Mends Me, hold the promise of a long shelf life. The first is an up-tempo, feel-good song with strong Afro-Cuban percussion rhythms. The latter is a haunting ballad about a man who has lost himself in a painful breakup--a perfect vehicle to show off Anthony's technical and emotional range.

The singer's pop album is being co-produced by the ubiquitous Corey Rooney (of Mariah Carey and J. Lo fame), who appears to be playing it safe. For example, on I've Got You--which Columbia, Anthony's pop label, considered using as the single--the rhythms and melody sound like an overprocessed hit from the '80s. And on another track, Anthony duets with teen pop star Jessica Simpson. "We wanted to keep him young and cutting edge," explains Tommy Mottola, chairman of Sony Music (which owns Columbia). Memo to Sony: Simpson is young, but she ain't cutting edge.

Music is only part of Anthony's mainstreaming agenda. He is also an accomplished actor with a proclivity for choosing edgy characters. He has worked for film directors Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out the Dead) and Stanley Tucci (Big Night). He appeared on Broadway in the title role of Paul Simon's short-lived production The Capeman, during which Simon compared Anthony to a young Sinatra.

Watching his understated performance as a waiter in Big Night prompted actress and producer Salma Hayek to cast Anthony in her forthcoming Showtime production of Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies. He plays the small but pivotal role of Lio, a political activist in the Dominican Republic during Trujillo's regime. "When I met him, I knew he was perfect for the role," says Hayek. "Lio, like Marc, has this larger-than-life spirit that can convince you anything is possible." The film was shot in Veracruz, Mexico, with an all-Latin cast and director.

It's 7 o'clock and getting dark. Soon Anthony will have to start laying down vocal tracks. His assistant reminds him that director Spike Lee wants to see him in a dress with his chest and legs shaved. Anthony explains that Lee offered him the part of Angel, a transvestite, in the movie version of Rent. Although Anthony would normally jump at such an opportunity, he will have to decline. He has little free time and prefers to spend it with his family. "I feel comfortable and blessed with who I am," he says. "I'm right where I need to be in life, and my music reflects that."

Right now he is concerned with helping his seven-year-old daughter Arianna slide grape Popsicles out of a plastic mold. Arianna, Anthony's child from a previous relationship with a New York policewoman, spends every other weekend with Dad. She is lithe like her father, with brown hair hanging below her knees. Giving her father a purple-stained kiss on the cheek, she seems oblivious to the messy child-support dispute her parents have been having for more than a year.

Torres, Anthony's wife, has Cristian Antonio in tow, at five months the newest addition to the family. Anthony takes him in his arms and starts dancing. "I'm glad Marc was finally able to balance his career with a family," says mentor and longtime friend Ruben Blades. "At the end of the day, it is the most important thing."

But finding domestic tranquillity wasn't easy for Anthony, who had a fair share of tabloid exposure from stormy relationships with Mira Sorvino and Jennifer Lopez. He and Torres, a former Miss Universe from Puerto Rico, were introduced at a party. They dated on and off for almost 2 1/2 years. Then, in May 2000, while they were in Los Angeles for an awards show, Anthony surprised Torres by chartering two planes filled with friends and family to Las Vegas. At midnight the two were married in the penthouse Oriental Suite of the Desert Inn.

Before the press junkets start for his new CDs, Anthony will take his family on a cruise aboard his new 73-ft. yacht Maribel, named after the sister he lost to a brain tumor. He's excited, yet embarrassed by the extravagance. He recalls going through "rich people's trash" on Manhattan's Upper East Side as a child, looking for toys his mother couldn't afford: "I'll never forget finding this Tonka truck. It was missing a wheel, but it was the best toy I ever had." These days, there's little missing in his life.