Enrique Suave

03/02/2000 9:00 PM, LAUNCH
Stephen Peters

For the time being, Enrique Iglesias seems to have escaped the dreaded Curse Of The Namesake Heartthrobs, a notorious hex which cast sizable shadows over the careers of other high-profile offspring such as Desi Arnaz Jr. and Frank Sinatra Jr.

In fact, with his first official Stateside release, Enrique, Iglesias seems more intent on securing a spot among the current crop of pop's hitmakers than pitting himself against his father, famous Latin crooner Julio Iglesias, or his brother, Julio Jr.

"Gimme a break," Iglesias sighs. "There's no competition with anyone. They always call me to compete with my father after a while. In the beginning it was comparisons, and at the end they told me to compete with my father. I was sick of it. It's pathetic."

Despite his obvious musical genetics, Iglesias says he came into himself as a recording artist mostly on his own. "It's not like I grew up in an environment where in every corner of my house there was somebody playing an instrument. No, it wasn't quite like that, not at all," he says. "I mainly started songwriting when I was 12, 14, a little kid...I was a very shy kid. I used to hide away in my room and just write songs. By the age of 17 I was recording with a band, and by 18 I got signed up to a record company and then left."

His status as a Latin sex symbol--"Trust me," he insists, "if there's something I'm not, it's that"--was secured with the release of his Spanish-speaking, self-titled debut album in 1995. That disc spawned five hit singles, a feat he surely wouldn't mind matching with his domestic bow.

And while the new album includes such ethnic-flavored fare as "Bailamos" and "Oyeme," alongside a duet with Whitney Houston ("Could I Have This Kiss Forever?") and Spanish and English versions of Bruce Springsteen's "Sad Eyes," Iglesias resists the pigeonholing that has enveloped other artists in the wake of 1999's so-called Latin pop movement.

"You said it--it's pop," he says. "It's not Latin, it's pop...You can't be No. 1 in the U.S. if you're not mainstream. Let's be realistic...if I succeed with this album, what makes it Latino is me. I'm Latino. But the album itself is really a mainstream album. If that's what you mean by a movement, great. But it's not like people are hearing salsa music on every corner...

"What I'm trying to say is, I don't want them to make Latino music a trend," Iglesias adds. "I guess I'm so scared of trends because...I want it to last. I want it to be there for a long time, not just think it's one music and that's it. There's so many different styles. I want people to discover it little by little...but at the end, the good thing about this business is if the song is good and the album is good, it's going to survive anyway."