Alex Matos — Alexis Hipólito Suero Matos, born in Santo Domingo on 12 February 1976 — is a Dominican salsa singer and songwriter known as El salsero de ahora, who spent much of the 2010s among the most decorated names in Dominican salsa.

The neighbourhood group

He was singing lead for a small group of children from his neighbourhood at five. He later studied voice with the teacher Marianela Sánchez, who helped set his musical direction toward salsa and pop ballad, and with the arranger Sandy Jorge he made his first record, «Ponte en salsa» (2009): ten songs, eight of them new, seven of Matos’s own composition, plus an adaptation, «Piel de ángel», and a tribute to the Puerto Rican sonero Ismael Rivera.

«Si entendieras»

In 2011, working with the arranger Víctor Waill, he released «Si entendieras», a song that became better known through Anthony Ríos’s recording of it than his own. «Una noche no es bastante», «El cariño es como una flor» and «Amor perfecto» followed, along with «Quiero decirte que te amo» and «Que pena me das», his own compositions, which established him as a singer-songwriter rather than only an interpreter.

«El salsero de ahora»

On his first European tour he met Roberto Ferrante, president of Planet Records, who signed the production and distribution rights to «El salsero de ahora» (2013): twelve tracks, six adaptations and six new songs, three of them his own. Promoted first on the U.S. East Coast, the album reached number 8 on Billboard’s Latin Tropical Albums chart, and «Una noche no es bastante» reached number 7 on the Tropical Airplay chart. Matos appeared on «Un Nuevo Día», «Acceso Total», «Despierta América», «Sábado Gigante» and Jaime Bayly’s programme as the record spread his name beyond the salsa circuit.

Awards and later records

«Salsa Sabor y Sentimiento» followed in 2017 and «Para ti Anthony, el tributo», an homage to Anthony Ríos, in 2021. His collaborations include «Prefiero la soledad», with Antony Santos (2013), «Quién controla el amor», with Yanfourd (2015), and «Corazón suavecito», with Chiquito Team Band (2019). Between 2011 and 2014 he won Salsero del Año at the Premios Latino, the Premios Casandra and the Premios Soberano, and was named Revelación Tropical at the Premio Lo Nuestro — four wins in a row that made him, for that stretch, salsa’s most recognised Dominican name.

Legacy

Matos built a career in a genre without deep Dominican roots by writing much of his own catalogue rather than only interpreting it, and by the mid-2010s his songs — carried as often by other singers’ recordings as his own — had made him one of the country’s standard-bearers for salsa romántica.