He has prominent roles in films such as Crossover Dreams (1985), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), The Super (1991), Predator 2 (1990), Color of Night (1994), Safe House (2012), The Counselor (2013) and Hands of Stone (2016), along with three Emmy Award nominations for his performances in The Josephine Baker Story (1991), Crazy from the Heart (1992) and The Maldonado Miracle (2003).

In addition, he has collaborated with different artists such as Usher, Elvis Costello, as a soloist and as a guest Michael Jackson, Luis Miguel, Julio Iglesias, Ricky Martin, Juan Gabriel, Laura Pausini, Shakira, Thalía in the Spanish version of the song "What More Can I Give" written and translated by Blades as "Todo Para Ti".

He also translated into Spanish the track "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" in the version called "Todo Mi Amor eres Tu" included in Jackson's anniversary album Bad 25.

His mother's great-uncle, Juan Bellido de Luna, was active in the Cuban revolutionary movement against Spain[5] and was a writer and publisher in New York City.

[6] Additionally, on Finding Your Roots it was revealed that Amelia Denis de Icaza, the first Panamanian woman to publish her poems, was the aunt of Ricardo Miró, making her Blades's great-aunt.

In Blades's early days, he was a vocalist in Los Salvajes del Ritmo,[1] and also a songwriter and guest singer with a popular Latin music conjunto (ensemble), Bush y sus Magníficos.

His strongest influence of the day was the Joe Cuba sextet and Cheo Feliciano, whose singing style he copied to the point of imitating his voice tone and vocal range.

Blades's first notable hit was a song on the 1977 album Metiendo Mano that he had composed in 1968,[1] "Pablo Pueblo", a meditation about a working-class father who returns to his home after a long day at work.

The Colón and Blades recording on the same album of Tite Curet Alonso's composition, "Plantación Adentro", which dealt with the brutal treatment of Indian natives in Latin America's colonial times, was a hit in various Caribbean countries.

(The film El Cantante, starring executive producer Marc Anthony and then wife Jennifer López, told a fictionalized version of this story, in which Blades tells Lavoe he wrote the song for him.)

Blades wrote and sang a sequel song, "Sorpresas", (surprises) on his 1985 album, Escenas, which revealed that Pedro had survived the incident and was still alive.

[citation needed] A 2016 study concluded that "Regardless of his constant efforts not to be cornered ideologically [...] Blades always identified himself as a Panamanian and a Latin Americanist", inspired by Simón Bolívar.

[citation needed] In 1982 Blades got his first acting role, in The Last Fight,[1] portraying a singer-turned-boxer vying for a championship against a fighter who was played by real-life world-champion boxer Salvador Sánchez.

In 1984, he released Buscando América, and in 1985, Blades gained widespread recognition as co-writer and star of the independent film Crossover Dreams as a New York salsa singer willing to do anything to break into the mainstream.

The next year he released the English-language collaboration Nothing But the Truth,[1] with rock artists Sting, Elvis Costello, and Lou Reed whose song "The Hit" aka its main chorus "Don't Double Cross the Ones You Love", appeared in the opening and closing credits of Sidney Lumet's 1990 crime drama film Q & A; also in 1988 he released the more traditionally salsa Antecedente, again with Seis del Solar, which again won a Grammy Award.

[11] In 1994, he mounted an unsuccessful Panamanian presidential bid, founding a center-left party called Movimiento Papa Egoró (whose name comes from the Emberá language and means "Mother Earth").

In 1997, Blades headed the cast of singer/songwriter Paul Simon's first Broadway musical, The Capeman, based on a true story about a violent youth who becomes a poet in prison, which also starred Marc Anthony and Ednita Nazario.

He played immigration agent (la migra), Conrad Lozano, who works with Mulder and Scully to solve unexplained murders involving both rural California migrant workers and the Mexican folklore of El Chupacabra.

In the 2003 film Once Upon a Time in Mexico, starring Johnny Depp, Antonio Banderas, and Willem Dafoe, he played the role of a retired FBI agent.

Blades's 1999 album Tiempos, which he recorded with musicians from the Costa Rican groups Editus and Sexteto de Jazz Latino, represented a break from his salsa past and a further rejection of commercial trends in Latin music.

In 2017, Blades performed as one of the featured artists for Puerto Rico in Lin-Manuel Miranda's charity single "Almost Like Praying" to raise money for victims of Hurricane Maria.