Creator Spotlight First Look: Dante 9th — Building a Rock Identity One Life Chapter at a Time
Gary Whittaker | Jack RighteousCreator Spotlight · First Look
Dante 9th is moving from making songs with AI toward something harder to build: a rock identity with a recognizable point of view.
A few days ago, Borja Larragan messaged me from Cairo with a simple update: Dante 9th had released its first single in English.
The song is Suncerity. He also told me it is the first track from a new album.
On its own, that is release news. But I have been talking with Borja and following the development of Dante9 for long enough that I see it differently.
This is a checkpoint.
From “I Want to Get Better” to Building Dante9
My first conversations with Borja were not about launching an artist brand. He had already been making music with Suno and wanted to improve, but he was trying to make sense of too much information at once.
That changed the direction of our work. Instead of asking him to work through everything, I pushed him toward one active project and one question: what actually belongs to Dante9?
The goal became less about generating another usable song and more about learning to hear the difference between a result that works and a result that feels like part of the same artist.
What Dante 9th Is Becoming
Dante 9th is a virtual rock project built around lived emotion rather than novelty. Its public catalogue has developed through Spanish-language songs while the sound has leaned toward melodic alternative rock, post-grunge and pop-rock territory.
The recurring emotional territory matters more than any one genre label: memory, struggle, faith, family, rebuilding, identity, hope and the decisions people make when life changes around them.
Dante 9th / Dante9
Borja Larragan
Spanish-language rock catalogue
First English-language single
Suncerity
A new album beginning with Suncerity
The Sound Has Been Built Through Decisions
One of the most useful parts of working with Borja has been separating influence from imitation.
At one stage, we used the kind of emotional and production functions associated with accessible North American rock as a reference point: vocal weight, guitar energy, dynamic lift, memorable hooks, intimate verses and choruses that open wider.
The assignment was never to copy a band or rebuild a particular song. It was to understand why certain choices work, then translate those functions into something that could eventually be recognized as Dante9.
I later turned that process into a public training example: How to Turn a Reference Song Into an Original Spanish Rock Track in Suno.
That distinction matters because an artist identity is not a prompt. It is the accumulation of choices that survive from one song to the next.
Human Direction Is the Part Worth Watching
Dante9 is an AI-assisted music project, but that label does not explain the interesting part of the work.
The useful questions are human ones: What story should this song carry? Which generation gets rejected? Which lyric needs to become more specific? How should the vocal feel? Where should the chorus lift? Which reference is useful, and which part must be left behind?
Those decisions are where a catalogue begins to become an artist.
Before Suncerity: A Spanish-Language Catalogue
Suncerity does not arrive as Dante9’s first public work. The project already has a growing Spanish-language catalogue across major streaming platforms, including releases such as Mírame, Virgilio, Portinari, A paso firme, Kintsugi RGB, Sueños garantizados and Maldito Dante.
That history is important because the first English single is not a reset. It is an expansion.
If the next album works, the challenge will be to carry the emotional and sonic identity that has been developing in Spanish into English without making Dante9 feel like a different project.
Suncerity Is the Right First-Look Moment
The timing is what makes this worth covering now.
Borja is not presenting a finished career story. He is entering a new phase while the decisions are still visible: a first English-language release, a new album beginning, a larger public catalogue and an artist identity that is becoming more deliberate.
That is exactly what I want a Creator Spotlight First Look to capture.
Not the polished retrospective after everything worked.
The moment when a creator starts making choices that can determine what the project becomes next.
Listen and Follow Dante 9th
These are the official Dante9 destinations I can verify from Borja’s own material and the project’s public releases. I am deliberately not linking lookalike social accounts that I cannot verify as his.
As Borja confirms additional official social profiles, I will add them here rather than risk sending readers to unrelated accounts using similar names.
What I’m Watching Next
The next question is no longer whether Borja can make songs.
It is whether the new album can make Dante9 easier to recognize.
I will be watching for continuity in the vocal character, lyrical point of view, guitar and rhythm choices, emotional pacing, visual identity and the way the project moves between Spanish and English.
If those pieces begin reinforcing each other, Suncerity may end up meaning more than “the first English single.” It may be the point where Dante9’s next era became visible.
Creator Spotlight First Look
This series follows creators while the work is still moving: what they are building, what decisions are shaping it and what other creators can learn from watching the process.