Natalia Alexandra Gutiérrez Batista, known as Natti Natasha, is a Dominican singer and songwriter. She works across reggaeton, Latin pop and bachata, and is the most internationally successful Dominican woman in urban music, with a catalogue built largely on collaboration.

Bellas Artes

She was born in Santiago de los Caballeros in 1986 and first sang in the children’s group of the church she attended. Her parents enrolled her at the city’s school of fine arts when she was eight, and it was there that she took her first singing lessons and decided what she wanted to do.

The groups that failed

At eighteen she began writing and recording her own material and performing around Santiago. She formed a group called D’Style with friends, which recorded a few songs and broke up, and sang backing vocals with Ingco Crew, which also broke up. She put the career on hold.

El Orfanato

She resumed with the intention of going solo in the urban genre, and reconnected with a producer who by then was working for Don Omar’s label. One of her songs was playing in the studio when Don Omar heard it, and he signed her.

Her recorded debut came in 2010 on a remix with Gyptian and Don Omar, and she appeared on the label’s compilation of new signings. Dutty Love, released with Don Omar the following year, won three Billboard Latin awards. She put out an EP in English in 2012, and her first single as a solo artist, Makossa, reached number one on the Italian reggaeton chart. The contract ended in 2014.

Pina Records

She spent a year as a guest voice on other people’s albums, among them Magia, on a record by Lápiz Conciente. In 2016 she became the first woman signed to Pina Records, and her first single for the label, made with Daddy Yankee, went to number one in the Dominican Republic.

Criminal

Criminal, released with Ozuna in 2017 and written by the two of them with Jhay Cortez, reached number five on the Hot Latin Songs chart and is the record that moved her from featured vocalist to headline artist.

The year that followed was a run of collaborations — with Thalía, with Bad Bunny, and with Becky G on Sin Pijama, which reached number four on the same chart.

Iluminatti

Her first studio album appeared in February 2019 with seventeen tracks and guests including Kany García and Anitta. It entered the United States Latin albums chart at number three, the strongest opening week for a Latin album by a woman since Shakira’s previous release.

Sony and the return to bachata

She signed with Sony Music at the start of 2021 and opened that period with a song recorded alongside Prince Royce. Three albums have followed, the most recent of them given over to bachata, which took the award for best tropical album at the Premios Juventud.

Recognition

She holds a Guinness world record for the most Premio Lo Nuestro nominations, has won repeatedly at the Premios Juventud and the Premios Tu Música Urbano, was named female Hot Latin Songs artist of the year by Billboard, and received Billboard’s Unstoppable Artist award. At home she has twice taken the Soberano for the outstanding Dominican artist abroad.