Piso 21: The Life Story Behind the Colombian Pop Band
In this post
Piso 21 began with an elevator. In 2007, in Medellín, a group of young men met at a friend’s party in an apartment on the twenty-first floor of a building, and the evening turned into the start of a band. The name they chose, Piso 21, means Floor 21 in Spanish, and it kept the memory of that night inside every poster, every album, and every introduction that followed. It was a joke that became an identity, and then an identity that became a career. The four who formed the group were Pablo Mejía, known as Pablito, Juan David Huertas, known as El Profe, David Escobar, known as Dim, and Juan David Castaño, known as Llane.
Medellín in 2007 was a city remaking itself. The violence that had defined it in earlier decades was receding, and a new generation of musicians was giving it a different sound, one that mixed pop melodies with urban rhythms and guitars. Piso 21 belonged to that generation, alongside artists like Maluma, Karol G, and J Balvin, who were all working in the same city at the same time. The band did not arrive with a hit. It arrived with a friendship, a name, and a willingness to work for years before anyone outside Medellín knew who they were.
The first recognition did not come until 2012, five years after the party on the twenty-first floor, when the group released its debut album. The real breakthrough came later still, in 2016, when the band signed with Warner Music Latina and released “Me Llamas”, a song that became the theme of a Colombian telenovela and a hit across Latin America. From there the story runs through “Besándote”, “Déjala Que Vuelva” with Manuel Turizo, the album Ubuntu in 2018, a founding member leaving in 2019, a replacement arriving, and a second departure in 2025 that left the band as a trio. It is a story of patience, of pop songs built on friendship, and of a group that kept going when its shape changed.
A Party on the Twenty-First Floor
The founding story of Piso 21 is one of the simplest in Latin pop, and the band has told it often enough that it has become part of their legend. In 2007 four young men from Medellín found themselves at a party in an apartment on the twenty-first floor of a building in their city. They talked, they played music, and they discovered that they shared the same taste and the same ambition. Pablo Mejía, Juan David Huertas, David Escobar, and Juan David Castaño decided to form a group, and they took the floor number as their name. An elevator ride became a brand, and the brand became a promise to climb.
Each of the four brought something different to the group. Pablo Mejía, Pablito, gave the band one of its voices and its energy on stage. Juan David Huertas, El Profe, brought a teacher’s patience and a musician’s ear, and his nickname, which means the teacher, stuck because of the way he worked with the others. David Escobar, Dim, added his voice and his guitar, and Llane, Juan David Castaño, completed the four-part harmony that became the band’s signature in its early years. They were not assembled by a record label. They were friends who chose each other, and that choice shaped everything that followed.
Medellín gave them a scene to grow in. The city’s music was changing fast in the late 2000s, with reggaeton and urban pop sitting beside the pop and rock that had come before, and young audiences were hungry for songs that sounded like their own lives. Piso 21 rehearsed, wrote, and played wherever they could, building a local following the slow way, one show at a time. There were no shortcuts in those years, and the band has always been honest about that. They were young men with a name from an elevator and a sound they were still finding.
The name itself turned out to be useful in a way nobody could have planned. Piso 21 is easy to remember, easy to say, and easy to picture, and it carries a small story inside it. Every time a presenter introduced the band, the name invited a question, and the question invited the story of the party. A band that can make an audience smile before it sings a note has already won half the battle, and Piso 21 won that half from the very beginning.
Five Slow Years Before Anyone Noticed
A band formed in 2007 does not usually wait five years for its first album, but Piso 21 did, and the wait shaped them. Between 2007 and 2012 they rehearsed, performed in Medellín and the surrounding region, and learned how four voices could blend into one sound. The work was unglamorous. They played small venues, they travelled to towns where the audience did not know their songs, and they went home to write more. The city around them was producing stars quickly, but Piso 21 moved at its own pace, and that pace protected them from the mistakes that come with rushing.
Their debut album, a self-titled record released in 2012, was a gentle, guitar-led pop album, full of sun and melody, and it earned them their first widespread recognition. The songs on it were romantic and easy to sing, and they showed a band that loved harmony and acoustic sound. It was not the urban pop that would later make them famous, and that is part of its charm. The debut captured four young men singing about love in the way young men do, with sincerity and without irony, and listeners in Colombia responded to that honesty.
The album did not make them stars overnight, but it gave them a calling card. Promoters could hear what the band sounded like, radio programmers could play a song and watch the response, and audiences outside Medellín could discover them for the first time. The group began to tour more widely, and their name began to appear on bills with other Colombian artists. The climb was still slow, but it was now visible, and the band could feel the ground rising beneath them.
Those five years also taught them how to work together, and that lesson would matter more than any single song. A band is a small business and a friendship at the same time, and both parts have to survive the long nights, the small pay, and the disagreements about which song to record next. Piso 21 survived those years because the four members liked each other and liked the music they made together. When the breakthrough finally came, it came to a group that already knew how to share a stage, a van, and a decision.
Warner, Maluma, and “Me Llamas”
The year 2016 changed everything for Piso 21. The band signed with Warner Music Latina, one of the biggest Latin labels in the world, and the signing gave them the reach they had never had: promotion across Latin America, radio in new countries, and a team that could put their songs in front of audiences far from Medellín. A label deal does not guarantee a hit, and many signed bands never find one, but Piso 21 had a song ready that justified the faith. That song was “Me Llamas”.
“Me Llamas”, which means “you call me”, was released in 2016 and became the theme song of La ley del corazón, a Colombian telenovela, which meant that millions of television viewers heard it every night. The song reached the top forty in several Latin American countries and became the band’s most successful single to that point. Its mix of pop melody and urban rhythm suited the moment perfectly, and the band’s four voices carried the chorus in a way that made it easy to sing along to. A version with Maluma, another Medellín star, pushed it further, and the two acts together gave the song a reach neither could have achieved alone.
The success of “Me Llamas” also changed how the band was seen at home. They were no longer a local Medellín group with a nice debut album. They were a Warner act with a continental hit, and their concerts began to grow. The telenovela connection mattered more than it might seem, because a theme song becomes part of people’s evenings, part of the story they follow, and the band’s name attached itself to that nightly habit. When the telenovela ended, the song lived on, and so did the band’s new audience.
It is worth noting how long the road to that moment had been. Nine years had passed since the party on the twenty-first floor, and four years since the debut album. The band had not chased a quick hit. It had built a sound, signed with a major label at the right moment, and released the right song into the right television show. The timing looked like luck from the outside, but it was the result of patience, and patience is the least glamorous and most important part of the Piso 21 story.
“Déjala Que Vuelva”, “Te Vi”, and Ubuntu
The run that followed “Me Llamas” proved that the hit had not been a one-off. “Besándote” kept the band on the radio, and then “Déjala Que Vuelva”, released in 2017 with the young singer Manuel Turizo, became one of their biggest songs. The title means “let her come back”, and the song tells the story of a man asking for a lost love to return, a theme that Latin pop audiences have loved for generations. Turizo’s voice, still new to most listeners, blended with the band’s harmonies in a way that made the record feel fresh, and the song travelled across Latin America and Spain. It remains one of the records most associated with Piso 21, and it is still a centrepiece of their concerts.
The band’s second studio album, Ubuntu, arrived on 11 May 2018, with the single “La Vida Sin Ti” released the same day. The title came from an African word meaning that a person is a person through other people, a philosophy of shared humanity that the band said described their own friendship. The album mixed the guitar pop of their early years with the urban and trap sounds that were dominating Latin music, adding atmospheric synths to the club-ready rhythms. It was a more ambitious record than the debut, and it earned a Platinum certification in the Latin field from the RIAA, along with multi-platinum recognition in Mexico.
Ubuntu also carried “Te Vi”, a song that became another staple of the band’s live shows, and the album’s success gave the band its first real touring life beyond Colombia. They played festivals and venues across Latin America, and their audience grew to include listeners who had never been to Medellín but knew the words to “Me Llamas” and “Déjala Que Vuelva” by heart. The band that had once rehearsed in a flat on the twenty-first floor was now singing to crowds in other countries, and the name that had started as a joke about an elevator had become a name that concert promoters in many cities could sell.
There was a risk in the Ubuntu sound, and the band knew it. The synths and trap beats were a long way from the acoustic guitars of the 2012 debut, and some early fans missed the simpler sound. But the band’s harmonies held the record together, and the songs themselves, romantic and direct, were the same kind of songs they had always written. The production changed. The heart of the music did not, and that continuity is why the album worked. It sounded new without sounding like a different band.
Llane Walks Away, Lorduy Steps In
On 3 February 2019, Juan David Castaño, Llane, announced that he was leaving Piso 21 to pursue a career as a solo artist. It was the first break in a lineup that had held together since 2007, and it was a serious test for a band built on friendship. Llane had been one of the four voices since the party on the twenty-first floor, and his departure left a gap that was musical, personal, and public all at once. Fans wondered whether the band could continue without him, and whether the harmonies that had defined their sound would survive the change.
The band answered by bringing in David Lorduy Hernández, known as Lorduy, an up-and-coming Colombian artist, to take Llane’s place. Lorduy was not a copy of the man he replaced. He brought his own voice, his own style, and his own following, and the band had to learn again how four voices fit together. The transition was watched closely, and the first songs with the new lineup were judged against the records that had made the band famous. It was a difficult position for a new member to enter, and Lorduy entered it in the full glare of a fan base that had loved the original four.
The years that followed showed that the band could survive the change, even if it could not be the same band. They released new music, including the album El Amor en los Tiempos del Perreo in 2021 and the album 777 on 13 October 2022, and they kept touring. The new records had a different energy, shaped by Lorduy’s presence and by the changing sound of Latin pop, and the band’s audience stayed with them through it. A group that survives a founding member’s departure has passed a test that many bands fail, and Piso 21 passed it by refusing to pretend that nothing had changed.
Llane, meanwhile, built his own solo career, and the two paths, band and soloist, ran side by side in the years that followed. There was no public bitterness in the split, and both sides spoke of the decision as a professional one, a singer wanting to make his own music in his own way. That calm is worth noting, because band breakups in pop music are often ugly, and this one was not. The four friends who had met at a party in 2007 parted as professionals, and the band that remained kept the name, the songs, and the promise of the twenty-first floor.
A Trio Again After Lorduy’s Departure
In January 2025, Lorduy announced his own departure from the group, and the remaining members confirmed that they would continue as a trio without a replacement. It was the second lineup change in six years, and it left Piso 21 as Pablo Mejía, Juan David Huertas, and David Escobar, the three who had been there since the beginning apart from Llane. A trio is a different instrument from a quartet, and the band knew it. Three voices cannot produce the same harmonies as four, and the stage looks different with one fewer person on it. But three members who have played together since 2007 also share a history that no new singer could bring, and the band chose that history over another search for a replacement.
The decision to continue as a trio said something about what Piso 21 had become. It was no longer a group held together by its original lineup, and it was no longer a group that needed four voices to be itself. It was a band with a catalogue, a name, and three men who had lived the whole story together, from the party on the twenty-first floor to the Warner deal, the Ubuntu tour, and the albums of the 2020s. That continuity, rather than any particular lineup, was what the audience had followed, and the band trusted it.
The years since Ubuntu have also shown a band willing to keep changing its sound. El Amor en los Tiempos del Perreo, from 2021, leaned into the reggaeton and urban styles of its moment, and 777, from 2022, continued that exploration. Neither album repeated Ubuntu, and neither tried to. The band’s later work has the confidence of a group that no longer needs to prove it can have a hit, and can instead make the records it wants to make. That freedom is a reward for survival, and it is one that few Latin pop acts earn.
What remains, through all the changes, is the Medellín identity. Piso 21 still carries its city’s name in its story, still plays for audiences that remember the early years, and still sings the romantic pop songs that made its name. The trio that remains is not the four friends who met at a party in 2007, but it is the closest thing to them that still exists, and the audience that follows the band follows that thread.
What the Band Means to Medellín
Piso 21 matters to Medellín because the band’s story is the city’s story in miniature. A group of young men from a city that was rebuilding itself met at a party, chose a name from an elevator, worked for five years before anyone noticed, and then carried their city’s sound across Latin America. They did it alongside other Medellín artists, in a moment when the city’s music was changing the sound of the whole Spanish-speaking world, and their songs became part of that change. “Me Llamas”, “Déjala Que Vuelva”, and “Te Vi” are now records that people associate with a particular time and place, and that association is a form of legacy.
The band also matters because it showed that a group built on friendship could survive the music industry. Record labels, lineup changes, shifting fashions, and the pressure to repeat a hit have ended many bands, and Piso 21 has survived them all, in one form or another, for nearly two decades. The survival was not smooth, and the band that plays today is not the band that formed in 2007, but survival itself is an achievement in pop music, where most groups last a few years and then disappear. The name Piso 21 still means something to audiences in Colombia and beyond, and that meaning was earned slowly.
For the fans, the band’s concerts remain the centre of the story. A Piso 21 show is a singalong, with the audience carrying the choruses of “Me Llamas” and “Déjala Que Vuelva” as loudly as the band does, and the shared singing is the point. The group has always written songs that are easy to sing, and that choice has given them an audience that participates rather than merely watches. In a music world full of spectacle, that participation is a quiet and lasting achievement.
My Take:
I have always liked the Piso 21 origin story more than most band origin stories, because it is so ordinary. Four young men met at a party in an apartment on the twenty-first floor, and they decided to make music together. There is no dramatic discovery, no talent scout in a bar, no tragedy that pushed them into song. There is a party, an elevator, and a name that made them laugh. I think that ordinariness is the point. Most bands start exactly like that, with friends and a joke, and most of them do not last. Piso 21 lasted, and the reason it lasted is the part of the story that interests me more than the party itself.
What I admire most is the patience of those first five years. The band formed in 2007 and did not release its debut album until 2012, and in those five years they rehearsed, played small venues, and learned how to be a band. That is a long time to work without recognition, and it is a long time to keep believing in a group when the city around you is producing stars more quickly. I think that patience protected them. By the time the debut arrived, they already knew how to share a stage, how to write together, and how to survive a bad night. A band that learns those things early has a foundation that a quick hit cannot give it.
I also think the debut album deserves more respect than it usually gets. It was a gentle, guitar-led pop record, full of sun and melody, and it sounded nothing like the urban pop that would later make them famous. Some people might call it a false start, but I do not see it that way. I see a band finding its voice, writing romantic songs in the way young men do, and learning that audiences respond to sincerity. The songs on that record were not trying to be fashionable. They were trying to be true, and that effort shows. A band that starts by being sincere has something to return to when fashion changes, and Piso 21 has returned to that sincerity again and again.
The Warner signing in 2016 is the part of the story where I feel a certain tension, because a major label deal is both a gift and a risk. The gift is reach, promotion, and radio in countries the band could never have reached alone. The risk is that the label’s idea of the band replaces the band’s idea of itself. Piso 21 handled that tension well, in my view, because “Me Llamas” was already their song, not a song written for them by a label team. The telenovela placement helped, and the Maluma version helped, but the record itself was theirs, and its success belonged to them. I think that is the right way for a label deal to work, and it is rarer than it should be.
“Déjala Que Vuelva” is the song I return to most often when I think about this band, because it shows what four voices can do that one voice cannot. The harmonies carry the chorus, and the plea in the lyric, let her come back, gains weight from the fact that four men are singing it together. Manuel Turizo’s contribution adds a younger voice to the mix, and the combination feels like a conversation rather than a solo. I think that is the special quality of a vocal group, and it is the quality that a solo career, however successful, cannot replace. When Llane left, the band lost a part of that quality, and no replacement could restore it exactly. That loss is real, and I think it should be named rather than glossed over.
Ubuntu is an interesting album to me, and I have mixed feelings about it. I like the ambition, the decision to add synths and trap rhythms to a guitar pop sound, and I like the title, with its idea that a person is a person through other people. That idea fits a band built on friendship, and it shows that the group was thinking about what it meant to be a band, not only about what would sell. At the same time, I think the album’s production sometimes hides the harmonies that made the band special, and I miss the simpler sound of the debut on some of its tracks. That is a matter of taste, and I do not want to pretend it is a fact. But I think it is honest to say that the band’s greatest strength has always been its voices together, and any production that pushes those voices to the back is a risk.
Llane’s departure in February 2019 is the saddest part of the story for me, because it broke a friendship that had lasted since 2007. I understand why a singer wants a solo career, and I do not blame Llane for wanting to make his own music in his own way. But I also know what a band loses when a founding member leaves. It loses a voice, a history, and a piece of its identity, and the audience feels that loss even when the new lineup is good. Piso 21 survived the change, and Lorduy did a difficult job well, but survival is not the same as continuity, and I think it is fair to say that the band was never quite the same after Llane walked away. That is not a criticism of anyone. It is simply the truth about groups.
The decision to continue as a trio after Lorduy’s departure in January 2025 interests me, because it is a choice that could have gone either way. The band could have searched for another singer, and many groups would have done exactly that. Instead, Pablo, El Profe, and Dim chose to carry on as three, trusting the history they share over the search for a new voice. I respect that choice, and I think it shows a maturity that the band did not have in 2007. A young band needs four voices to feel complete. An older band knows that completeness comes from the years together, not from a number on a poster. I hope the trio works, and I think it has a real chance, because three men who have played together since they were young have a bond that audiences can feel.
I also want to say something about Medellín, because the band’s story cannot be separated from the city’s story. Medellín in 2007 was a city remaking itself, and its music was part of that remaking. Piso 21, Maluma, Karol G, and J Balvin were all working in the same city at the same time, and their success changed how the world saw Medellín. That is a powerful thing for a city to experience, and the band’s songs are part of the soundtrack of that change. I think the members know that, and I think it gives their work a weight beyond pop music. They are not only a band. They are representatives of a place, and that responsibility shows in the way they talk about their city.
There is a lesson in this story for young musicians, and it is a simple one: take your time. Piso 21 waited five years for a debut album and nine years for a breakthrough, and the wait made them stronger. Too many young bands rush to release, rush to sign, rush to chase a hit, and they burn out before they have learned how to be a band. Piso 21 did the opposite. It rehearsed, it played small rooms, it learned to write together, and when the hit came, the band was ready to carry it. I hope young musicians hear that, because the music industry will always tell them to hurry, and hurrying is usually the wrong advice.
I think about the fans, too, and about what a Piso 21 concert feels like. The audience knows the words, and it sings them back, and the night becomes a shared act rather than a performance. That is the reward for writing songs that are easy to sing, and it is a reward that spectacle cannot replace. A band can fill a stage with lights and dancers, but it cannot force an audience to sing. The audience sings because the songs belong to them, and the songs belong to them because the band wrote them in plain language about feelings everyone has. That is a craft, and Piso 21 has practised it well.
If I am honest, I worry about the band’s future as a trio, and I think that worry is reasonable. Three voices cannot do what four voices did, and the harmonies that made “Déjala Que Vuelva” so rich will sound different now. The band will have to find new ways to arrange its songs, and new songs that suit three voices rather than four. That is a creative challenge, and it could produce something fresh, or it could leave the band sounding thinner than before. I do not know which it will be, and I do not want to pretend that I do. I only know that the three who remain have earned the right to try, and that their history gives them a better chance than most bands would have.
I also think the band’s later albums, El Amor en los Tiempos del Perreo and 777, deserve a fair hearing rather than a comparison with Ubuntu. They are different records, made by a different lineup, in a different moment for Latin pop, and judging them only against the 2018 hit is unfair. They show a band willing to keep moving, to try new rhythms, and to refuse to repeat itself. That willingness matters, because a band that only repeats its greatest hit becomes a tribute act to itself. Piso 21 has refused that fate, and I respect the refusal even when the new records do not move me as much as the old ones did.
In the end, I think Piso 21 will be remembered as a band that climbed slowly and stayed standing. The name came from an elevator, and the climb it suggested turned out to be real. Five years to a debut, nine years to a hit, a founding member lost, a replacement found and then lost, and still the band plays on as a trio. That is not a fairy tale. It is a working life, with all the mess and change that a working life contains. I admire it for exactly that reason, and I hope the trio keeps singing, because the songs they wrote together still deserve a stage.
One thing I have not said yet is how much the band’s story depends on the people around them, the promoters, the radio programmers, and the telenovela producers who gave “Me Llamas” a nightly audience. A band can write a good song and still go unheard, and Piso 21 was fortunate to have a song that found the right television show at the right moment. I do not call that luck alone, because the song had to be good enough to carry the show, but I do think it is honest to admit that timing and help matter. The band’s patience put them in a position to receive that help, and that is the part they controlled.
I also think about what the trio years might produce, and I find myself hopeful rather than worried when I look at it from a different angle. Three voices can do things four voices cannot. The harmonies become clearer, each singer has more room, and the arrangements can breathe. Pablo, El Profe, and Dim have spent nearly two decades singing together, and that shared history gives them a musical understanding that a new member could not bring. If they write songs that suit three voices instead of trying to imitate the old four-part sound, they could make the most honest records of their career.
Finally, I want to remember the party itself, because it is the image I will carry from this story. Four young men in an apartment on the twenty-first floor of a building in Medellín, talking about music, not knowing that the evening would give them a name, a career, and nearly twenty years of songs. That is how most good things begin, not with a plan but with friends in a room, and the fact that Piso 21 turned that evening into a life in music is a reminder that ordinary nights can hold extraordinary beginnings. I hope the trio remembers that night too, because it is still the truest part of who they are.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the band called Piso 21, and where did the name come from?
The name means Floor 21 in Spanish, and it comes from a friend’s party in Medellín in 2007, held in an apartment on the twenty-first floor of a building. Pablo Mejía, Juan David Huertas, David Escobar, and Juan David Castaño met there, decided to form a group, and kept the floor number as their name.
How long did Piso 21 work before releasing its first album?
The group formed in 2007 and released its self-titled debut album in 2012, five years later, after rehearsing and playing small venues around Medellín. That slow start gave the four members time to learn how their voices blended and how to work as a band.
What did signing with Warner Music Latina in 2016 change for the band?
The Warner deal gave Piso 21 promotion and radio reach across Latin America that it had never had, and the same year the band released “Me Llamas”. The song became the theme of the telenovela La ley del corazón, reached the top forty in several countries, and became their biggest hit to that point, with a version featuring Maluma.
Which Piso 21 song features Manuel Turizo, and why do fans love it?
“Déjala Que Vuelva”, released in 2017, features Manuel Turizo, and fans love it for the way the band’s harmonies carry the plea for a lost love to return. It became one of the band’s biggest songs across Latin America and Spain and remains a centrepiece of their concerts.
When did Llane leave Piso 21, and who took his place?
Llane, Juan David Castaño, announced his departure on 3 February 2019 to pursue a solo career. He was replaced by David Lorduy Hernández, known as Lorduy, who sang with the band through the albums of the early 2020s before leaving himself in January 2025.
Who is in Piso 21 now, after Lorduy’s departure?
Since January 2025 the band has continued as a trio of Pablo Mejía, Juan David Huertas, and David Escobar, with no replacement announced. The three have been together since the band’s formation in 2007, apart from Llane’s years in the group.
