SHAKIRA FT. El CATA, “LOCA”

6th November, 2010

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A year ago, she was on top with "Loba" -- and with the change of a single letter, she is back. But as always with Shakira, there's more going on underneath the surface.

The song is a faithful rewrite of Dominican rapper El Cata's slangy merenguetón "Loca con Su Tiguere" (crazy with her streetwise man), from 2008, with a beefed-up, slicker, and quicker production as befits Shakira's international pop-star profile. She changes the refrain to "soy loca con mi tigre," (i'm crazy with my tiger), a rewrite for global Spanish, since "tiguere" is specifically urban Dominican slang. But the third name in the songwriting credits, after hers and El Cata's, is the real key to understanding not just this song but an entire era of Latin pop: Armando Pérez, a Miami-born Cuban-American songwriter, producer and hook scavenger better known by his stage name, Pitbull. It's the second time he's made a sideways appearance on this travelogue, but his knack for repurposing big crowd-pleasing hooks for even more omnipresent international hits gets its first real showcase here.

Although reggaetón riddims can be detected underneath the merengue horns, the early 2010s were the low point between reggaetón's tentpoles of dominance over Latin pop: it's characteristic of the period that good old-fashioned merengue, rather than urbano, got the credit for the splashy, bouncy joy of "Loca," which was a sizeable hit across all kinds of international markets, thanks to canny marketing pairing Shakira with a different rapper in different languages.

The English-language version trading out El Cata for UK grime emcee Dizzee Rascal is also an extremely 2010 move: he sounds pleased to be there but needs the rhythms rearranged to fit his chewy, off-kilter flow. Shakira's lyrics are roughly the same, generalizing the sentiments even more for the bigger audience while still keeping it subcultural enough to spark curiosity. (I.e. the Dominican slang "yo ni un kiki" (I don't even have a dime) becomes "I got my kiki" (I'm laughing).)

But her introductory line in both versions, the breathy English "Dance... or die" is the most 2010 sentiment of all: the apocalyptic mood in post-subprime pop, from Ke$ha's nothing-to-lose class warfare to Britney's doompartying "Till the World Ends," is enough of a truism among pop-watchers that Shakira adding to the cacophony in praise of madness was hardly even noticed at the time. But the extended hangover from that reckless party mood has outlasted the Obama era: not even dance can palliate the eternal bummer these days.

WISIN & YANDEL, “LLAMÉ PA' VERTE (BAILANDO SEXY)”

1st April, 2006

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One of the reasons for doing this project is to tease out unexpected resonances. So rather than comparing "Llamé Pa' Verte" to "Rompe," its immediate predecessor in reggaetón chart-crashing, I'm reminded instead of the last male duo to appear at #1, all the way back in 2004: Andy & Lucas, two Spanish pretty boys peddling Idol-approved sentimental nostrums. It's not just "real," "raw" music as opposed to "manufactured," "telegenic" pop: Juan Luis "Wisin" Morera Luna and Llandell "Yandel" Veguilla Malavé, rough-voiced rapper and smooth-voiced singer respectively, are if anything better-looking than the rather callow teen pin-ups Andy and Lucas; Yandel in particular serves such excellent smolder that he very nearly outclasses the hip-thrusting bikini-clad models in the video.

It's not even a forthright representation of adult sexuality as opposed to fanciful youthful ideas about romance: dance music is certainly a stylized representation of sexual activity, but the stylization is just as important as the sex. Yes, Wisin and Yandel play booty-calling ("Llamé pa' verte" means "I called t' see you") horndogs, Yandel's chorus extremely unambiguous about the sexual metaphor of the dembow rhythm ("a ella le encanta como lo hago y le doy" -- "she loves how I do it and give it") while Wisin's verses are only slightly more clever in their entendres ("yo tengo la crema pa' tu piquiña" -- "I have the cream for your itch"). In its way, it's just as hyperbolic and idealistic as Andy & Lucas, only making grandiose, exaggerated claims about sexual competence rather than the similarly grandiose claims about emotional competence and eternal devotion that romantic balladry promises.

Perhaps it's simply more realistic: love cannot be guaranteed, but sex can, so reggaetón (especially early, up-from-the-streets reggaetón) concentrates on the latter: not just because of its inherent attractions, but primarily because of its fungibility. Every reggaetonero, like every rapper and dancehall toaster before them, is, before anything else, a capitalist. Which is what makes this, even more than "Rompe," the first street-level reggaetón #1, with no concessions given to the pop market. With nearly a third of the track left to go, Wisin begins to shout out the track's producers and brag about how many records they've sold, the kind of coda designed for a DJ to fade into the next song.

If your primary conception of music consumption revolves (like mine) around songs as discrete units, every mp3 or stream functioning like an imaginary 45-r.p.m. record, this kind of extra-musical information, an essential element of brand maintenance in a musical world ruled by mixes and soundsystems, takes some getting used to; but pop music doesn't belongs to the bedroom listener carefully placing the stylus on "Surfer Girl" any more (and probably much less) than it belongs to the basement raver screaming to be heard over the bass of a song they'd never know the name of if its performers didn't shout it at them repeatedly. Buckle up; the new world is only starting.

DADDY YANKEE, “ROMPE”

10th December, 2005

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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.