Rene Lopez

All roads led to the Jam of the Month Club. “It’s so gratifying the creativity is so wide open, and every month I get to put a smiles on faces with free music. This is what music should be about,” Rene shares. The first track debuted in September with “Heavy Baby Heavy” an invigorating homage to intelligent women bursting with sleek stanky funk that recalls the electro grooves of 1980s Prince and The Time. Rene has consistently offered a broad array of funky gems since. A recent highlight has been the deep swampy-soul of “Watch Me Turn It Up” recorded in New Orleans and featuring some of the Crescent City's finest, including George Porter Jr. from The Meters on bass and Ivan Neville on Hammond B-3 organ and piano. Watching those masters perform Rene's music was a career highlight. “It was so special, it made me feel like my funk was true.” Other spotlight jams are the psych-funk freak out “U Can Bet On Me,” featuring iconic bluesy vocalist Irving Louis Lattin, and a true 1980s feel.

Rene's father put down his horn many years ago in favor of a steadier living, and to this day Rene remains inspired by his father's legacy. “My father is so proud of me that I’ve stuck to it. He always says he’s blown away by my creativity. It means so much to me. I’m so excited to share my latest jams with him.”

Rene Lopez's earliest memories are of standing in the wings of so many stages, while watching his father—renowned salsa musician Rene Lopez Sr.—perform. Sr. played on all kinds of them – from small cramped club stages in the Bronx, to Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, and Madison Square Garden. Rene can still recall the club circuit's heady mix of cigarettes, sweat, and perfume enveloping his senses, and how the music connected the musicians to the audience, and he can still recall wanting to also be onstage.

“New York is a melting pot of cultures and musical sensibilities—Brazilian music, Latin clave rhythms, 1980s electro-funk, and classic soul—and they all meld together in my head. I don’t label it, and I have no fear exploring these as an artist.”

NPR's Alt.Latino referred to Rene Lopez's music as one of Alt.Latino's favorites of 2014.

Rene's groundbreaking band in the 1990s, The Authority, blazed through the boundaries of hip-hop, Latin, and funk, playing gigs alongside P-Funk, The Meters, and Fishbone, earning accolades from jam band fanatics and hip-hop heads, who used to pack like sardines into The Wetlands and Nightingales to see them. Later, Rene started the band Wasabi with the legendary John Popper of Blues Traveler.

Rene Lopez (born August 6, 1969) is a disco, funk, and electric latin soul musician and singer-songwriter based on New York City.

Rene Lopez II was born August 6, 1969 in the Bronx, the son of an Italian mother and Puerto Rican salsa musician, Rene Lopez Sr., who played trumpet during the heyday of Fania Records with the Ray Barretto Orchestra and Típica 73, bands beloved by New York's Latin community.