By 2008, Jenni Rivera was a superstar in the United States and Mexico. She performed every weekend that year, constantly appeared on television, and the media could not get enough of her.
She had first ascended to that stratosphere of success the year before, when she won the Billboard Award for Regional Mexican Song of the Year, Female, for her hit “De contrabando.” At the Premios Lo Nuestro, she won Female Artist of the Year in the Regional Mexican category. “I’m very happy. Thankful to God and my fans who have supported my music, and as I always say, I’m representing our musical genre and our Mexican people here at Premio lo Nuestro,” she said to Tony Dandrades at the awards ceremony.
Jenni also took the stage that night to present an award to Victor Manuelle, and to sing her award-winning song “De contrabando.”
In 2008, the number of awards grew. At the Billboard Awards, Mi vida loca won the Regional Mexican Album of the Year by a Female artist, and her song “Mírame” won for Regional Song of the Year by a Female artist. At the Lo Nuestro awards, she once again won Female Artist of the Year. She was also nominated for her second Latin Grammy that year, in the Best Ranchero Album category, for La Diva en Vivo!
Her momentum continued to accelerate, and in September 2008, Jenni finally debuted at number one on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart—the list of the highest selling Latin albums in the country—with her album Jenni. Also that year, four of Jenni’s singles made the Hot Latin Songs chart, including “Cosas del amor,” a song by Olga Tañón which featured Jenni as a guest artist.
Meanwhile, Jenni seriously explored opportunities related to music but in other areas. Over the course of her career, and after having triumphed in the wake of so many truly difficult experiences, it became clear that her sharp business sense allowed her to oversee her career like a corporation. It was also increasingly obvious that Jenni had a gift for more than just singing. When she appeared at awards shows the ratings went through the roof; when she was interviewed on television, whether she was talking about her music or some controversy, viewers were glued to their screens. The charisma Jenni radiated on stage carried over into other areas, and offers started to roll in, seeking to capitalize on her strong bond with her fans. As Jenni herself said, she had always possessed an uncanny ability to forge a connection with people, ever since she was a little girl. But thanks to her music, she could exercise this talent to its maximum potential.
“Everything came from music,” she said at the Billboard conference in 2012. “Because through my music, I’ve revealed who I am. Not just as an artist, but as a woman. I live, express, and interpret my music so they can know that if I didn’t actually live the story, someone is living it right now. That’s a big part of it. The rest is what I’ve always been. I was always an entrepreneur. Ever since I sold chewing gum in school and sold my grades and test answers at school. I was always selling something. Even my professor at business school told me, ‘You have to sell something, you have to market something.’ That always stayed in my head. I never imagined that I would end up selling myself. It all comes from music, but the entrepreneur was there before. The two joined together and made an entertainer.”
Jenni was always a tireless worker. But now she put her foot on the accelerator. Everything she had planted the seeds for in 2008 was ready for harvest in 2009, and the results were stunning. The year opened with the announcement that she was a six-time finalist for the Billboard Latin Music Awards. Her success was such that she had not one, but two songs nominated for Hot Latin Song of the Year: “Culpable o inocente” and “Inolvidable.”
In the midst of all of these impressive achievements, in February 2009, before awards season got underway, Jenni took the money she had worked so hard for and treated herself, purchasing her dream house in Encino, California. It was a mansion with seven bedrooms and eleven bathrooms which her fans would get to see in great detail the following year when Jenni launched her own television reality show, “I Love Jenni,” on the network Mun2.
Once the sale was finalized it was announced in the Los Angeles Times, which reports on the buying and selling of luxurious celebrity homes. It must have been the first time a Regional Mexican artist had been considered important enough to merit a mention in that section.
The February 7, 2009, Los Angeles Times article said: “When Latin music superstar Jenni Rivera moves, she moves fast. Rivera recently closed escrow in seven days on an Encino home she bought for 3.3 million. The 9,527-square-foot house she purchased is in a desirable neighborhood south of Ventura Boulevard. It has seven bedrooms and eleven bathrooms and was recently remodeled top to bottom. It sits on 4 acres and has a large grassy lawn, pool and entertainment patio that includes a spa and a waterfall. The home has marble and hardwood flooring, a gourmet kitchen, walls of windows and city lights views. There is a grand two-story entry, and the property is gated and private.”
The piece noted that Rivera, 39, had been represented in the sale by Faby Llerandi of Divina Realty, her own real estate company. That was hardly surprising. By that time Jenni controlled every aspect of her business, from recordings, to tours, to real estate deals and everything else.
“I always wanted to be that way,” Jenni responded in 2012 when I asked her if she had always been in control. “There were some arguments with my dad. My dad is my hero. He’s a man who I admire and love very much. But I’ve always been so independent-minded that I wanted to do things my way, while my brothers did things my dad’s way. I chose the songs and said, ‘If you want me to record, dad, I’m going to choose the songs.’ ‘But I’m the executive producer and it’s my label!’ He said. ‘Well, that’s too bad, because I have to really feel what I’m going to sing.’ And that’s what I got used to, and I took that approach with the label where I’ve been now for over twelve years—Fonovisa, Universal. And they also trust me completely. They say: ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ They let me record what I want, they let me feel, they let the woman take charge of the artist, and that’s really important. I’ve seen with the fans, the audience, that what they like the most is to feel it’s a human being up there trying to connect with them, because one way or another when it’s fake, I’ve seen so many times that it doesn’t work. Whether it’s with my label, with Mun2 or the radio, I always have the final say. I say I’m not controlling, but they would say I am,” she said with a laugh. “I say it’s the way to take care of what’s mine.”
In April 2009, at the Billboard Latin Music Awards Jenni won Top Album of the Year for a female artist. This significant award meant that she had been the top-selling female artist of the year, in any Latin music genre.
While she racked up one award after another on the way to superstardom, the media continuously tried to hype new stories around her: that a fan may have hit her, that Graciela Beltran said something to her, that her boyfriend uploaded a video on the Internet, and on and on. Jenni Rivera could appear on television every day, twenty-four hours a day, and they still wanted more: more scandals, but also more success and more awards. Everything that had to do with Jenni was endlessly fascinating. Her fans wanted to see her succeed, but they also just wanted to see her.
Yet somehow, Jenni managed to stay grounded. In terms of her family, she was in a wonderful place. She had her gorgeous house, where she lived together with all five of her children. And nearby she had her parents, her brothers and her sister Rosie, all serving as a nurturing support system for Jenni.
In October 2009, Jenni, Don Pedro Rivera and Lupillo, Pedro Jr., Juan and Gustavo agreed to speak at the Billboard Regional Mexican Music Conference in Los Angeles. It was a historic event, the first time that all of the artists in the family would be on a single panel. That seminar was the second time Jenni had participated in a Billboard conference, sponsored by the magazine that covered the music industry and the artists who had the strongest effect on that industry. In 2007, as part of the Billboard Mexican Music Conference, Jenni had participated in a panel titled “Women in Mexican Music,” along with Diana Reyes, Marisol and Vicky Terrazas (Horoscopos de Durango) and Graciela Beltran (yes, Graciela and Jenni were on the same panel, and both behaved as the consummate professionals that they were). The discussion was fascinating, as this group of highly successful women spoke frankly of the challenges they faced in a very male-dominated environment.
By 2009, Jenni had risen to new heights. Her career was climbing sharply, and she was invited to participate in the conference again, but this time on a panel called “The Rivera Dynasty.”
“The Rivera family represents the essence of regional Mexican music and the Mexican community in the United States,” said Gustavo Lopez, president of Fonovisa and Disa Records, the labels of Lupillo, Juan and Jenni at the time. “Their great musical talent combined with an excellent approach to business has made them—and they will continue to be—a powerful entity.”
By then, the most powerful of them all was Jenni. She arrived at the panel wearing a tight but tasteful black wool skirt, with a black silk blouse. She wore her hair back and looked youthful, slender, beautiful, and exceedingly professional.
Jenni knew perfectly well how to play the role of “Diva” on stage, and the role of the serious career woman fully in control of her businesses off stage. In her interviews, Jenni always talked about her music, and her businesses with the same proprietary sense. In contrast with many other artists who preferred to keep their observations on a very superficial level, Jenni always liked to analyze her music, and herself, with the same objectivity. She was very clear that her success was no accident, nor was it simply the result of writing good songs and making good music, as many artists like to disingenuously say, as if millions of dollars had not been spent on marketing and promotion. Jenni talked openly about plans, projects, setting goals, and taking control. Together with her father and brothers, they all talked about their beginnings in the music business, their unity, and the importance of supporting each other as a family. It was an informative, and more than anything, highly emotional discussion, and Don Pedro wiped tears from his eyes more than once.
Around that time, Jenni was recording her album La Gran Señora, along with Jose Hernandez’ mariachi band, Mariachi Sol de Mexico. It was her first album with a mariachi band, and she was extremely proud of this; not only because it was her first, but because at the time it was so rare to hear a female singer leading a mariachi band (and it still is).
Recording with a mariachi band presented a serious vocal challenge. Jenni had to take her voice to a new level. When we spoke about La Gran Señora on Estudio Billboard in 2010, Jenni sang songs live in the studio, accompanied by her guitarist. She was magnificent; even in that very intimate, acoustic setting, her voice was powerful and perfectly in tune, with that touch of bravura that mariachi music requires.
“Recording with a mariachi band was incredibly important to me, because I grew up with that,” Jenni told me then. “That was the first music my ears ever heard, when I was in my crib. So I like it. If there’s one thing I like to sing, it’s mariachi. But after you start to work in one style, the record labels are very scared. They’re afraid of artists going off recording in other styles, because they think they’re going to lose the audience they have, or who knows what could happen. And with mariachi, for many years only the greats have been really successful at it. A Pepe [Aguilar], a Vicente [Fernandez], an Alejandro [Fernandez]; it’s always been the same ones. It wasn’t very commercial for new artists. Or for women.”
But Jenni wasn’t just any woman. In December 2009, La Gran Señora debuted at number 2 on the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart, and at number 1 on the Regional Mexican Albums chart, where it remained for four weeks. None of Jenni’s albums had stayed in first place for so long up until then. Jenni’s popularity continued to explode. Over the first six months of 2010, my production team and I tried many times to get Jenni on Estudio Billboard, the interview show with intimate acoustic musical performances that I host on the television network V-Me. Finally in August, we got the good news from Arturo Rivera, Jenni’s publicist (who would also perish in the plane crash). Jenni could come to the Estudio Billboard studios in Mexico City on August 21. She would fly that same day from San Luis Potosi, where she had a concert on August 20, and the next day she would fly out to Zacatecas, where she had another show. In other words, every minute of Jenni’s days were carefully scheduled, her calendar was jammed.
On August 21, Jenni arrived at Estudio Billboard accompanied by her manager, her personal assistant and Arturo Rivera, a very small entourage for a star of her magnitude. With the schedule she was on, she must have been exhausted, but she did not show it, although she did seem somewhat reserved backstage, possibly because she didn’t know what I was going to ask her. I went to see her in her dressing room to explain what we would talk about: her career, her music, her life, her songs. When she sat down next to me on the set, dressed for the interview in tight black pants, very high black heels, a low-cut black blouse under a leather jacket, and several bracelets and necklaces, Jenni was the diva. But over the course of the interview, Jenni never ceased being the open, honest woman she always was. It was one of the best interviews we ever had on Estudio Billboard, broken up with live performances of several of her songs, accompanied by her two guitar players, revealing notable musical maturity and depth.
“This mariachi album has been so important for me, I’ll tell you why: it wasn’t commercial for a woman to sing mariachi, and I was the executive producer and the musical producer, I chose one of the first songs called ‘Ya lo se’ [I already know]. It talks about the pain I feel when I find out my partner isn’t coming back to me anymore,” she said during the interview.
Jenni didn’t specify who that partner may have been; if it was her ex-husband, Juan, whose death that summer had been incredibly painful for Jenni; or if it were one of the many stories her fans could identify with. What’s certain is that by the end of 2009, something happened that was much more important than any record or any man. On November 19, at 6:29 in the morning, her daughter Jacquie gave birth to Jenni’s first grandchild, a little girl, Jaylah Hope.