One afternoon in February 2026, Gianluca arrived at a barbershop near a strip club in the vicinity of Merced Street, right in downtown Santiago. Dressed in a black tank top, despite the burning summer sun, he sat on a stool in front of a mirror and began cutting his own hair.
The clipper was cutting the thick black hair he had sported in recent years. With each fallen lock, the shaved look from his early years reappeared. “That was a performance”, he says to Culto. “The hair represents everything I was doing in the previous era, it’s a return to my classic cut. For me, cutting my hair was a big deal, I thought about it, I had never had long hair and at some point it was like ‘I have to do it, I have to do it’.”
It wasn’t just about more or less hair. Gianluca had other reasons to mark a change. “Also, in the summer I fractured my back. And there were also family things that were adding up. So it was like closing a cycle and starting anew in several ways.”
A new era that, of course, is marked with music. The “prince of Chilean trap” releases G Love 3, a new album that somehow dialogues with the two previous works of the same name (from 2018 and 2020) as a kind of trap saga. “I’ve always liked album sagas and wanted to have one in my catalog”, he explains. “Since I made the second one I knew a third was coming and it was a project that was being worked on somewhat in parallel with the other albums I was making.”
Prolific, Gianluca worked on the material for a long time. So there are older tracks, like SON BALAS, which he had shelved since 2022, to more recent creations. In fact, PLUGG DISS, which closes the album, was finished just over a month and a half ago. “Because of that it has gone through many tracklists, many different versions, even the final cut of this version that is going to be released, I didn’t finalize it that long ago either.”
-You released El último romántico in 2024, then …Hasta siempre! in 2025. Why the interest in releasing so much music in such a short time?
I have a very high song production, so naturally if I don’t release them, a lot of music stays behind. And then I feel there is a rhythm in the world and how we generally function, that there are things that have to come out at the pace we go. Within that creative period I made about 80 songs, 50 trap songs, among others, and a lot of music that will never be released. So, I feel that while there is something about the market or how music consumption works today, I feel that making music just for that doesn’t make sense. In my case, it has to do with my production.
The album is actually a double album. Side A, leaning towards trap, while Side B, to be revealed in the coming months, presents a more varied axis. “This one has a more sensitive energy and the other I think will be a bit darker and will also have more danceable things, a couple of reggaetons that were left out of this one.”
It is also a milestone; it is the first double album in Chilean urban music. “I love the A side and B side, I think that’s cool”, he comments. “I think not many people dare to make albums in urban music and dare to take a different step. Here suddenly the energy of projects has a lot to do with meeting expectations or what such artist does. There is no proposal to say, now I’m going this way, I make this concept and that. That’s what I want to do.”
It’s no coincidence that the opening song of G Love 3, ME RENUEVO, is somehow a statement. “2025 I’m 28 I only renew myself/when I first saw you I knew this was new”, Gianluca sings over a sample base taken from a Julio Iglesias song.
“We were listening to Julio Iglesias and I told the producer ‘It’s good, that, let’s sample it’. We made that song to be the first song on the album, if no other came, because of the sample. Because it’s open, something lights up and it’s very energetic,” he says.
The energy of the album is direct. And it doesn’t beat around the bush. In PLUG DISS, he sings: “I don’t give a damn because you hurt me/there are many fake people I ignore them/I focus on the present never on the past again”. And in another line he proclaims his resurrection: “Everyone says Gianluca is off where is he/everyone says Gianluca when is he going to do trap”.
When asked if he is talking about a particular person, Gianluca responds quickly like a rhyme. “To whom it fits directly… but really that lyric came from a joke in the studio and it stayed. I like the energy it has, more confrontational. I think many people realize over the years that there are things you have to face more directly and not turn inward. I have a certain tendency to that.”
-Have you ever felt betrayed by trusted people?
Yes, totally, totally.
-And about “everyone says Gianluca when is he going to do trap”, did people really come up to you asking that?
I feel that my audience and the people who follow me are divided between those who like the more indie stuff, the trap stuff I do, and also people listen to everything. From the beginning I’ve always been quite versatile and put everything into my project, I’ve thought about doing other projects separately, like a band or a side project, but in the end it all goes under my name.
Besides the radical haircut, in recent years, the icon of Chilean trap has gained muscle mass. He usually goes to the gym four to five times a week. An active energy that somehow also dialogues with this stage. “My psychologist always recommended exercise”, he says. “The truth is I’ve been interested in exercise since I was a kid. At some point I jogged a lot when I was thinner and over the years I picked it up again. I knew that before turning 30 I had to start exercising to build muscle mass and all that. And at the gym I find a space for myself, a somewhat meditative space, a kind of energy, it organizes your routine, brings physical changes, which at some point for me also has to do with a mental thing, organizing the head. And it has become part of my routine that I don’t give up for anything.”
Part of that energy, Gianluca poured into the music video for DIVA, the first single from the album, where he puts the artist in a hilarious boxing match with Romina Pistolas. An idea filmed at the Brooklyn Fight Club. “With the creative team, Max [Najdar] and Tiara [Bustamente], we developed this boxing idea. I had some references more related to the gym and there were other things, Morrissey videos, a range of things I had in mind… and suddenly we came up with boxing, with Romina starring too. Everything came together.”
The release of G Love 3 coincides with the 10th anniversary since the teenager Gianluca released his first song, Quemando Billetes. A track that already outlined some of his eclectic style. “That song is a statement of principles. I recorded it at Matías’s place, a friend, then the video and production were all directly in my hands. I already had a vision of what I was doing. I knew I could do well, I had a very strong clarity and I try to maintain those elements always. Today it’s very different.”
-With the experience of those 10 years of career what would you change from those early years?
The truth is, I’ve never been very strategic. I’ve never thought about things very strategically, I think that’s part of my essence too. So it would be kind of strange to change it, but I do think now that I’m older I have a different sense of pause, to see things more deeply. When you’re young you need things to happen now, now, and the album to come out now and everything to happen… and sometimes processes aren’t like that. I also learned that a lot with El último romántico, with this whole period where maybe I didn’t release albums. Now I do feel the need and I also communicated it to my team and we’ve been working on it, that I need to release music quickly because it’s my production level that needs to come out, otherwise I get blocked. But I do understand that everything has its time and place.
-And you became known very quickly, how do you feel you handled that very strong initial exposure you had?
I started without really knowing where I wanted to go. Having such an incipient scene where I started, doing everything alone and little by little I met producers, met people and little by little this thing was no longer a room in Bellavista, but Caupolicán, La Cúpula and festivals, many people and a movement that landed on many university people. I feel there was pressure and of course, maybe as an artist I feel it’s more noticeable in Yin Yang, which is my first album, it became much more mainstream. That was also the plan for it to be understood, but along the way there are things that get lost that are hard to see from inside.
-On Instagram I saw a post where you said that G Love 3 is the best album of your career. Do you really believe that?
I feel it’s the best I’ve done since Yin Yang (2019), like a solid work. I feel it’s very alive.
-With these 10 years of career and an album you consider the best, do you see yourself on a stage like the Viña or Olmué Festival? People like Pablo Chill-E, Polima, Young Cister have already been there…
Look, I don’t close myself to anything, really. I think those are cool stages and I feel that right now with the path I’m on maybe it doesn’t fit much with that. But I have a catalog and I have so many songs that I can put together any kind of show, any kind of party with the music I have. They are different eras, different things, plus my music is clean overall, I don’t have much problem with that for TV.
G Love 3 – whose cover was made by Joao, a painter friend of the artist – will have its corresponding promotional tour. There will also be a special show to mark Gianluca’s 10 years of career. “We want to make a big celebration. Well, for a while now my shows have been quite long, so it will be longer, I suppose, to fit many songs. We have to go through all the stages, play with a band, without a band, have guests and of course, it will be a bit the live presentation of G Love 3.”
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