Charly Black Grateful For Debut Album ‘Rio Bueno’

Dancehall deejay Charly Black says he is grateful for the success of his debut album Rio Bueno, which he says is “doing great all over the world.”

On November 12, last year the Trelawny native released his debut album, Rio Bueno, in honor of his hometown of the same name after 14 years of recording music.

“Everybody loves the vibe and everybody loves the energy, at the end of the day I am grateful, I give thanks to everyone who I have worked with on the project,” the deejay formerly known as Tony Mentol told DancehallMag. “It has very much surpassed my expectations.”

In December of last year, Charly went out on a promotional tour in support of his album and made stops that saw him perform in Chicago, New York, Florida, Houston Texas, and also in Kenya for the first time in his fruitful career. 

To date, the album has received over 33 million streams on Spotify, with You’re Perfect, the first track from the production receiving 90 percent of the streams on the platform.

The eleven-track compilation features one collaboration with fellow Dancehall star Teejay on track 7 titled, Bad.

In November 2021, Charly Black whose real name is Desmond Mendez mentioned in an interview on Ramona Samuels TV that his record label, Universal Records fired several A&R executives and delayed in the making of a music video for which he used his own money and paid for the production instead.

He also stated that a collaboration he did with dancehall legend Shaggy, didn’t make it in time for the final compilation because of “paperwork.”

His current manager, Julian Jones-Griffith told DancehallMag, “honestly, it was a real struggle with the label and we were pretty much left doing the bulk of the promotion ourselves, Charly has paid for most of the videos himself out of pocket.”

“They let go the entire staff and moved him over to Universal Latin,” the businessman revealed. “He was signed to Universal Latin originally but they have lots of sub-labels and moved Charly directly into the big label. He has such a big fanbase in Latin America.”

“The move from one sub-label to the other happened in early summer last year,” the manager who has been with the Bike Back deejay since 2016 stated.