At some point in her career, Jenni Rivera realized it didn’t matter what she did, what she said, who she was with, or what she was wearing, the media was interested in everything. This must have been very satisfying at first. Jenni’s career was growing, and every day there was more interest in her music. But then, interest in her music spilled over into interest in her entire life. Jenni wasn’t just a woman who sang corridos, or a single mother. She was also Lupillo’s sister. And she was the daughter of Pedro Rivera—the man who had released Chalino Sanchez’ records on his label. And Chalino Sanchez had sung narcocorridos and had been killed, which gave rise to all kinds of rumors about the Riveras’ possible connections to the narco underworld. It didn’t matter how many times Jenni denied every rumor and accusation thrown in front of her, there was always something else. The endless questions that arose were often just a reflection of her personal life. Did Jenni just get married, or divorced, had her husband been locked up in jail. The more public appearances Jenni made, the more rumors and interest swirled around her: did Jenni drink on stage, had she gotten drunk, did she take her shoes off, did she tell off some men, had she taken her bra off.
“I say what I think, I am how I am,” she told me in the 2010 interview on Estudio Billboard. “There are a lot of artists who are artists and in front of the cameras they can say one thing while they really think something else, but the point is to look good. I’m not like that. I am a woman and singing is my job. […] I get up on stage and I’m the singer, and I get off stage and I’m the woman. That means that because of the things I’ve said, because of how I’m so frank and direct, it gets the media’s attention, they publish it, it goes on the air and that gets the public’s attention. When you get the public’s attention you’re ratings. Whatever you say, whatever you do, your name is ratings. […] As the human being I am it can be exhausting, but I don’t complain. It’s part of what I decided to be, and I have to put up with it.”
More than anything else, perhaps the most important thing Jenni Rivera had was intelligence. And at some point, it occurred to her she could make something out of this rush of interest.
“When I saw how my life was intriguing to people watching television, I thought I’m going to use my name, my way. My name gets used in a lot of ways by many different people, so the best way to use the Jenni Rivera name is as the businesswoman I am and say, ‘I’m going to produce television shows, I’m going to put out a line of clothing, I’ll have perfumes, I’m going to have my own radio show,’” she explained at the Billboard Latin Music Conference in 2012.
One of the changes Jenni made in her life was to organize her support team. Up until 2003, she had worked hand in hand with her husband Juan, who had helped her with all aspects of her career and day-to-day tasks. And she had a team that included the well-known music lawyer Anthony Lopez, who was also her brother Lupillo’s lawyer. When Jenni and Juan separated, Lopez called up Pete Gonzalez, who at the time was working as the business manager for the group Los Tucanes de Tijuana, and Juan suggested he get in touch with Jenni.
“I met Jenni and she had bigger balls than most of the men I’ve worked with,” Gonzalez remarked in an interview for Billboard magazine in December 2012. “We connected. I knew I wanted to be a part of what she was going to do.”
With Gonzalez now at her side, Jenni’s team was in place. It’s important to remember that Jenni handled her career in a very businesslike way, ever since the beginning. She understood she needed someone to manage the business aspects, and someone to handle publicity. She had a makeup artist, a hair stylist, and a designer. Jenni understood the importance of investing in her career, and how important it was that she control her own image and her product.
“I still think of myself more as a businesswoman than an artist,” she told me during the Billboard Conference in 2012. “Even when I’m on stage, I know I’m getting paid, but that’s like a kind of therapy. It’s a release of everything I’m living. The work is traveling, promoting, but being on stage—those three hours I sing—is really the fun part of all this.”
By 2003, Jenni was very established as a singer who was constantly performing. In this regard she was not unique. In the world of regional Mexican music, groups and solo artists of the genre are always touring. They play almost every single weekend in all kinds of venues, from arenas and discos to outdoor fairs and clubs. Jenni did all of that, but at the same time she was a diva, and performed on grand stages like the Staples Center, the Nokia Theater, Mexico’s Auditorio Nacional, and the Ford Amphitheatre, where no regional Mexican artist had ever performed before. Jenni knew how to inhabit the world of Mexican music, only with the “diva” attitude of megastars such as Paulina Rubio and Thalia. But she didn’t limit herself to that role: Jenni loved performing live, and she loved connecting with her fans. Being untouchable was unthinkable to her. Her fans gave her energy and life, and she recognized that.
“The love you get from the fans is very special,” she said in an interview on Radio al Aire while promoting Homenaje a las grandes in 2003. “It’s something unique that my parents, my brothers and sister, my children, or my partner can’t give me. It’s a very different kind of love that many artists don’t appreciate, and it goes unnoticed. The fans are really important to me, and I like to give them the love and attention they deserve.”
Jenni always listened to her fans, and the more her fan base grew, the bigger she got. In 2004, in an effort to grow her audience and expand her own horizons, Jenni took an interesting step: she signed with the label Univision Records.
Univision Records had been formed in 2001 as part of Univision Communications, but it operated as an independent entity. Univision was a label with a wide range of artists in its catalog, but between 2001 and 2002, the company bought Fonovisa, the biggest label for regional Mexican music in the world, and the label that Jenni worked with the most.
Jenni was very happy at Fonovisa—in fact, Fonovisa and Univision shared the same administration and president—but Univision was seen as a more international, major label, which could work with Jenni not only in the Mexican music orbit but also in the world of pop. So on November 4, 2004, Jenni released Simplemente…La Mejor, a CD/DVD set featuring her greatest hits, including corridos like “Las Malandrinas” and “La Chacalosa,” and others like “Querida socia” and “Se las voy a dar a otro.” The album also included several rough cuts, such as “Amiga si lo ves” by Yaredt Leon, the first pop version of a song Jenni ever recorded. Although the song wasn’t a big hit on the radio—it was on the Regional Mexican Airplay chart for four weeks, peaking at just 35—it did signal a turning point in Jenni’s career, showing that she could cross over into different genres, and it revealed her vulnerable side. In “Amiga si lo ves,” she’s not the fighter who comes out of a bad relationship stronger than ever; she’s a woman who has lost the man she loves, and she still longs for him. “This song is very special to me, because I’ve always sung about things that I can feel, or I feel have happened to other people,” Jenni said in the press release announcing the song’s release. “A song like ‘Amiga si lo ves’ describes a woman’s feelings, no matter how strong she may be, or whoever she may be, we’ve all suffered for love.”
The video of “Amiga si lo ves” also marks a new level of artistic expression for Jenni. Directed by Risa Machuca and produced by the acclaimed Dominican film and music video director Jessy Terrero, it is a small film in itself, dedicated to everyone who has ever lost a loved one. Instead of simply featuring a woman in emotional pain, the video tells several interconnected stories of people who have lost the ones they love the most in their lives, from children to parents. It may be the most beautiful video in Jenni’s entire catalog.
“In the pop version, the emotion comes across stronger, and for me it’s important to be versatile and show it’s not just corridos and ranchera songs, with strong themes, I want to show that just like every woman, I have my moments of sadness,” Jenni explained in an interview with New York’s El Diario la Prensa on December 2.
While Jenni ventured out of her musical comfort zone singing pop, she also began exploring new territory on the business side. Between 2003 and 2005, Jenni began serious plans to launch a fragrance and a makeup line. The brand would be called Divina, as Jenni explained, because she wanted all women to feel divine, inside and out.
In an interview published in Vida en el Valle in February 2005, Jenni said she had worked on developing her cosmetics line for two years, conducting research and having meetings with manufactures of cosmetics ingredients.
“Very high-quality cosmetics are expensive, and my fans can’t afford high-quality cosmetics,” she said in the interview, explaining why she had decided to launch her new product line.
Several months later, in November of that year, her sister Rosie posted in a forum on Univision.com, announcing the launch of the line, which included lipsticks with the colorful names Rosa Rosita, Chiquis, and Juicy Jackie. Profits from the sale of those shades would be donated to Jenni’s foundation.
And Jenni still had her real estate office, her first profession which had allowed her to be self-sufficient and not have to depend on public assistance.
“She understood her identity as a brand,” her manager Pete Salgado said in an interview with Billboard following Jenni’s death. “She understood she was Coca-Cola. And things started to be done on her terms in every aspect. She was the best marketing expert I’ve ever known. She was focused. And it was hard to keep up with her pace. She’s a person who gets up at six in the morning, ready to get to work.”
Jenni had just begun to build her empire, but she already knew what course it would take.