DADDY YANKEE, “LIMBO”

2nd February, 2013

Wiki | Video

I was mostly disconnected from popular Latin music in 2013. I had moved to Chicago in the beginning of the year, and no longer had a car, so the dedicated radio-listening time I had had for the past decade vanished out from under me. But also, I was listening to less and less music overall, as joblessness and depression shoved me into an abyss, and I grabbed onto other interests in desperation and clung to them instead. It has been twelve years, and I'm only now starting to try to return to having a normal relationship with art, instead of alternately burying myself in it and running away from it as too demanding.

All of that to say, I hadn't really heard "Limbo" before now. Or maybe I had, and it just slid off my brain as though buttered, without leaving a trace behind. It's that kind of song. At first, I was cheered -- isn't that the reggaetón riddim? No, not quite, it's too fast. It's a tresillo, but not the same cadence. And then there's a beat drop, and it just pounds into undifferentiated EDM mush. The lyrics are in Spanish, but it's not exactly aimed at the Spanish-language market. As in his previous appearance here, he shouts out the Zumba fitness program, and this time it's more than just a shout-out: "Limbo" was commissioned specifically by Zumba, and Yankee's description of the song's intent, reproduced on Wikipedia, is as brand-friendly and corporate as they could wish: it is supposed to "invite the imagination, ignite creativity, to step away from the norm and bring something completely different."

Well, one thing about a song written for a fitness company: it's going to be energetic. And that energy is the best thing about it, with Yankee as motormouthed hypeman for an active session, his horndog persona entirely sanded down to a cheerful movement instructor. It still works exactly as it's supposed to, because its ambitions are so low; but it gives you absolutely no reason to listen to it if you're not breaking a sweat.

Airplay Watch:

• Tito El Bambino & Marc Anthony, "¿Por Qué Les Mientes?"
• Discussed in the previous entry.
• Carlos Vives ft. Michel Teló, "Come Le Gusta a Tu Cuerpo"
• Cheerful Colombian vallenato auteur Vives invites similarly cheerful Brazilian sertanejo chantalong huckster Teló for a very fun accordion-led dance tune with lots to chant along to in both Spanish and Portuguese.
• Don Omar, "Zumba"
• Another song obviously commissioned by the same company as "Limbo," this one intended for a dancealong video game. Omar is even more of a cipher than Yankee, but he always was: the music is slightly more interesting, in part because there's a merengue percussion line. 
• Romeo Santos, "Llévame Contigo"
• Another of Santos' stylish, swooningly romantic bachata with unusual musical flourishes, this one about begging a woman who is leaving him to take him with her.
• Prince Royce, "Te Me Vas"
• Another bachata about a woman leaving him, but Royce is nowhere near Santos' level either as a singer or a lyricist: he just complains about it. The musical flourishes are more obvious and feel rather Disney Channel.
• Thalía ft. Prince Royce, "Te Perdiste Mi Amor"
• A third bachata #1 in a row -- the loss of regional music in the streaming #1s is really felt here -- although this is easily the worst of the three. Thalía is a pro but no bachatera, and Royce switching between English and Spanish shows just how much of his appeal is in his voice's tone rather than his control over it.

DADDY YANKEE, “LOVUMBA”

25th February, 2012

Wiki | Video

The fact that this is only Daddy Yankee's second appearance at the top of the Hot Latin chart really underlines the ways in which the reggaetón to which he remained steadfastly devoted had slipped out of the zeitgeist. Three whole album cycles have gone by since his previous #1, all of which topped the Latin Albums chart, but unlike his compatriots Wisin y Yandel he has not shifted towards a more generic urbano sound, sticking closely to the dancehall origins of reggaetón and maintaining a Caribbean-forward sound rather than chasing the hip-hop currents of the mainland US.

Even this, his crowning return to the top, was only for a week (2012's fleeting attention strikes again), and while the reggaetón riddim is gestured to, in strict generic terms the beat is soca, the dancehall-derived music of Trinidad and Tobago. In the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, tempos this rapid are usually associated with Dominican merengue, itself a twist on Cuban mambo, which has its roots in the son music marketed as rumba in English. The song's title, a portmanteau of "love" and "rumba," is meant to be big, generic, and crowdpleasing; to that same end, witness the remix of the song featuring Don Omar, which appeared on both the parent album and the single in both physical and digital formats.

But even if the song isn't strictly reggaetón -- which tends to flourish at midtempo -- it's a welcome reminder of the cacophonous energy, bragadocious attitude, and overt sexuality which reggaetón brought to Latin pop. Even though the lyrics are relatively mild for Daddy Yankee -- a clue as to why might be in the middle eight, where he shouts out the Zumba fitness program, which was starting to commission high-energy Latin music around this time -- the ambient horniness of the premise (Daddy Yankee is using dance to seduce you) keeps the song vivid and dynamic despite the chintzy synthesized merengue horns.

Ultimately "Lovumba" may belong more in the line of Don Omar's big-tent party songs than in Daddy Yankee's own canon of self-assured reggaetón statements. The Billboard entry doesn't include the Don Omar remix, but I don't doubt that it helped get the song to #1; Daddy Yankee's return to the top spot in a more characteristic vein is still yet to come.

DADDY YANKEE, “ROMPE”

10th December, 2005

Wiki | Video

Are. You. Reeeaaadddy?

The reggaetón rhythm has appeared twice before on this travelogue: once as novelty and once as auteurist pop. But here, the final barrier falls, and its true, "género urbano," form shows through.

Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez, born in the dense urban jungle of San Juan and a participant in Puerto Rico's nascent hip-hop scene since his adolescence in the early 90s, adopted the nom de mic "Yankee" early on, a reference to the authoritativeness he sought to claim for his own as a young colonized subject. He was probably the first person to use the word "reggaetón" (a slang formation which just means "big reggae") while improvising on a 1994 mixtape. He was already a seasoned veteran of the streets, having seen his baseball coach shot in front of him at six years old, and having caught a stray bullet himself while taking a break from rapping for DJ Playero. That injury prevented him from pursuing his dream of baseball stardom, so he doubled down on music, soaking up influences from hip-hop to the north and dancehall to the south as well as the quick, violent vernacular of the mean streets of San Juan. His first solo record was released in 1995, when he was nineteen: he continued to churn out independent albums and mixtapes at a high rate, coalescing specifically around the reggaetón sound around the turn of the century.

His breakthrough was 2004's Barrio Fino -- signed to a major label, with distribution guaranteed beyond the Caribbean and Miami, he called in every favor, loading it with recognizable names from Puerto Rico's urban music scene and relying heavily on the thumping, inventive sonics of producers like Luny Tunes and Monserrate & DJ Urba. It worked. It became the first reggaetón record to hit #1 at the Latin Albums chart, and in fact it charted worldwide, making a dent even in Europe thanks to the undeniable urgency and fire of "Gasolina", a chest-thumping anthem big and bold enough to make a career; but despite having enough traction to break into the Top 40 on the Hot 100 and scoring #10 on Hot Rap Songs, it only went to #17 on the Hot Latin chart. Blame the inherent conservatism of the multiethnic, country-wide coalition represented by Latin radio play: although reggaetón was undeniably the sound of the young Caribbean, Mexican-Americans in the Southwest and the older, entrenched generation in the urban Northeast still regarded it with suspicion.

It would take two things for Daddy Yankee to make his bow here: first, the widely-admired and deeply-respected Shakira would have to bestow her imprimature on the reggaetón beat, making it a respectable music for romantic storytelling rather than a crude noise from the illiterate slums; and second, Yankee himself would have to go rather broader with his appeal. In practice, this meant first commissioning a colorful, cartoonish Monserrate & DJ Urba beat that seemed to take cues from the goofy, ear-sticking beats Dr. Dre had produced for Eminem's pop breakthroughs over the past half-decade. Then DY switches up his flow to incorporate not just chest-thumping boasts and horny chat-ups but nagging pop hooks and crowdpleasing pop-culture references, namechecking "My Boo," Scarface, and brand names from eBay to Frito-Lay to Listerine.

"Rompe" is probably nobody's favorite Daddy Yankee song: it's very 2005 in the way that means that nostalgia has not yet had quite enough time to reclaim it, and it works overtime to entertain and ingratiate in a way that keeps it at a distance where a more vulnerable or single-minded record could sink down deep into a listener's affections. But it is the song that marks reggaetón's first real appearance at #1, not as a novelty dance or as a pop accent but as the music that reggaetón actually was: a ground-up fusion of hip-hop aesthetics and urban Caribbean culture, compulsively danceable, hyperbolically aggro, and textually dense in a way that pop before or apart from hip-hop almost never is. The oversized jerseys and bling in the video -- I believe this is the first time living hip-hop culture has shown up in a #1 video -- makes it clear that a new generation is taking over Latin music, and that they're not interested in the continuity of musical or cultural traditions which have accompanied this travelogue over the the last nineteen years.

But it still sounds great turned up loud, and insofar as it represents the triumph of reggaetón in a chart dominated by ballads, midtempo rock, salsa, regional Mexican music, and dancepop, we are still living today in the world that it made.