NICKY JAM & ENRIQUE IGLESIAS, “EL PERDÓN”

21st Mar, 2015

Wiki | Video

The mid-2010s return of reggaetón with a new center of focus in Colombia rather than Puerto Rico (see J Balvin two weeks ago) now features reggaetón's first comeback story, compelling enough to put this song at #1 for 30 weeks.

Nicky Jam, born in Massachussetts to Puerto Rican and Dominican parents but whose early years were chaotic and ended up having to support himself in Puerto Rico at the age of eleven, released his first Spanish-language rap EP at fourteen years old in 1995 -- the same year he got hooked on cocaine. He was in a reggaetón duo with Daddy Yankee for a bit in the early 2000s before his substance abuse issues became too much for the older star to deal with; Yankee went on to rule the world with "Gasolina," and Nicky spiralled in relative obscurity, almost dying from an overdose in 2010.

It was his relocation to Colombia -- and specifically Medellín, Balvin's hometown -- that turned his life around. Colombians, having only received reggaetón from a distance, treated him like the legend he never really was in Puerto Rico (shades of the UK's reaction to US music in the last midcentury), and he got into the romanticism of vallenato, which encouraged him to sing instead of just rapping. Surrounded by Colombian collaborators, he got clean and started making new music again -- and when Enrique Iglesias came calling, hung up on him because he assumed it was a prank.

Eventually, of course, they worked it out. "El Perdón" (forgiveness) was written exclusively by Nicky -- Enrique generously forewent his usual writing credit -- and although it's literally a song about spiralling after a romantic breakup and asking for an ex's pardon, it's also very easily legible as a song addressing Nicky's own history in the music industry (and maybe especially, for fans hungry for a good gossip narrative, with Daddy Yankee), proving that he's changed. His singing voice, rougher and flatter than Enrique's, is authoritative but vulnerable, and the fact that the entire song is sung, with no rap verses, is an indicaton of reggaetón's future sustainability as a flexible genre outside of its original hip-hop/dancehall lineage.

It's also, of course, an indication of Colombia's emblanquecimiento -- whitening -- of reggaetón, as several observers have noted. It's not a coincidence that Afro-Colombian musicians have tended to draw more directly from Jamaican, Dominican, or US Black sources than from reggaetón in the years since. But that's for another day.

In the meantime, "El Perdón"'s reign at #1 almost exactly matched all of Daddy Yankee's #1 reigns combined before it. The listening public had made its preference clear: not only was reggaetón back, but reggaetón romántica specifically was its top priority.

This is foreshadowing.

Airplay Watch:

• Pitbull ft. Gente de Zona, "Piensas (Dile la Verdad)"
• Cuban expat pop-reggaetón summit with a heavy montuno piano hook. Pitbull's genial ringmastering is getting a bit long in the tooth by this point, but Gente de Zona do enough to keep the energy up. 
• Nicky Jam & Enrique Iglesias, "El Perdón"
• Discussed above.
• Juanes, "Juntos (Together)"
• Throwback cumbia-rock blend for the soundtrack to a Disney movie about a Latino track team in the 1980s coached by Kevin Costner. Perfectly adequate.
• Wisin & Carlos Vives ft. Daddy Yankee, "Nota de Amor"
• Cumbia, vallenato and reggaetón are all represented in another Colombia–Puerto Rico summit. DY casually blows both his collaborators out of the water.
• Romeo Santos, "Hilito"
• Chiming bachata that didn't rate a music video. Dwoopy synth sounds introducing the middle eight make it stand out from Santos' typical classy, narcissistic eroticism.
• Daddy Yankee, "Sígueme y Te Sigo"
• As if recognizing the new youthful middle-class appetite for reggaetón, the (forty-year-old) reining champ returns with a song about social-media popularity, with a video set in a high school.
• Yandel, "Calentura"
• Horny, half-rapped reggaetón with big sine-wave synths is still big business in the Puerto Rican wing of the industry; entirely of a piece with Yandel's recent solo work.
• Gente de Zona ft. Marc Anthony, "La Gozadera"
• Marc Anthony becomes the most recent enormous Latin star to co-sign Gente de Zona's party-hearty unity-flavored reggaetón. Salsa accents included to make him feel at home.
• Ricky Martin ft. Yotuel, "La Mordidita"
• Fun, flavorful electroswing-flavored merengue from an elder statesman who simply refuses to age and a rapper from the venerable Cuban hip-hop group Orishas. 
• Wisin, "Si lo Hacemos Bien"
• Dramatic, paranoid reggaetón in classic Wisin y Yandel fashion, just with Wisin singing the Yandel parts, which makes it less smoldering and more tough-guy vulnerable.