My Story

Lester Rey is a Chicago-born Puerto Rican vocalist, percussionist, and producer building criollo future sounds between memory, movement, and survival. His work lives in the liminal space — ni de aquí, ni de allá — where the pulse of Chicago’s underground meets the ancestral rhythms of Puerto Rico.

Raised between church, street, and sound system, Lester’s musical language transforms tradition into something urgent and present. Salsa, Rumba, and Merengue are reimagined through Juke, acid house, and 808-driven futurism — creating a sonic world where the Pentecostal church meets the underground warehouse. It is both inheritance and invention: a negotiation between lineage and self.

Released September 30, 2025, SAOKO & Shingaling marked his tenth and final EP — a closing chapter that lays the foundation for his debut album Antes de Correr (2026). Across these works, Lester explores resilience, personal rupture, and transformation — tracing the journey of becoming through sound, movement, and risk.

His path has moved through stages and cities that mirror his dual identity. From headlining Latinxt Fest and stages across Chicago, to performances in New York, Berlin, and Spain, his presence carries both diasporic tension and release. He has shared space with artists such as Residente, Cimafunk, Reyna Tropical, and Y La Bamba — each moment expanding a network of sound that refuses borders.

Beyond performance, Lester has built culture from the ground up. From early work with Tumbao Latin Dance Collective to founding Midnight Hibiscus, a live music and bolero-centered gathering, his curatorial practice creates spaces where intimacy, rhythm, and community converge. Through parties like Juketeo, he has bridged reggaeton, dembow, and música urbana with Chicago footwork and underground electronic bass — collapsing genre into experience.

His work extends into collaborations with independent labels like Discos Peligrosa and Hermanito, and partnerships with brands including Red Bull, Jack Daniel’s, and Herradura — always maintaining a clear artistic identity rooted in intention.

At its core, Lester Rey’s work is about fluidity — of sound, of place, of self. Moving beyond fixed definitions, his voice navigates gender as something lived and shifting, rather than confined — another current in the larger search for truth, belonging, and expression.

At its core, Lester Rey’s work is about return.

Return to the body.
Return to memory.
Return to something that existed before the world tried to name it.

Antes de Correr is not just an album — it is a process of reclamation. A search for self that moves through distance, contradiction, and transformation, arriving not at answers, but at truth.

This is not about fitting in.
It’s about building something that never had a place before.