Félix Ortiz grew up in Carolina, Puerto Rico, where he and his neighbor Gabriel Pizarro bonded over hip-hop and dancehall as kids. The two started making music together under the names Zion and Lennox, with Ortiz handling the melodies and Pizarro delivering the rhymes. They spent years working the island's underground reggaeton scene before their debut album, Motivando a la Yal, broke through in 2004.
The duo split for a stretch in the mid-2000s, during which Ortiz founded his own label, Baby Records, and built it into a Puerto Rican reggaeton powerhouse. Zion and Lennox eventually got back together and kept climbing: Motivan2 gave them their first number one on the Billboard Latin Albums chart in 2016, and they followed it with El Sistema in 2021 and singles like Wayo and Para Siempre.