Although he was not the first vocalist to rap over these beats, Tego Calderon was among the most lyrical and therefore most widely embraced in New York and beyond. But reggaeton proper was really created by mixtape DJs like DJ Playero, DJ Negro, and DJ Nelson who chopped up a handful of reggae riddims including “Dem Bow” and “Fever Pitch” into their own homemade party breaks. Spanish reggae was arguably introduced to the island of Puerto Rico by Ellis and the stable of Panamanian artists he worked with, who toured throughout Latin America. Hip-hop and house were in fact secret ingredients of the reggaeton sound even before it had a name, a fusion that happened in New York as much as Panama or Puerto Rico (and in fact, another of El General’s biggest hits is the house-tempo “Boriqua Anthem” - the official unofficial anthem of New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade). New York–based Panamanian-American producer Michael Ellis created the spare rhythm track from an echoey synthesized horn loop that more naturally suggests an early ’90s Nuyorican house track, but chopped up into a reggae pattern. A much more modest hit for El General, the untranslatable “Buduff Kun-Kun” is nevertheless a prime early example of how Panamanian dancehall could cease to be simply reggae en Espanól and become its own thing. “Teves Buena” (“You Look Good”) - an improvised lyric over a Jamaican riddim created by Steelie & Clevie - was one of his biggest hits, and more or less established the template for reggaeton as an original art form (See also “ Pu Tun Tun”). Franco was the most prolific and original MC of reggae en Espanól in the late ’80s and early ’90s. If any artist besides El General can claim to be the godfather of reggaeton, it’s his fellow Panamanian El General, born Edgardo Franco. The resulting composition “Ellos Benia” is best described as prehistoric reggaeton. Fernando Brown) and his Jamaican-born producer Phillip Smart reverse engineered Steely & Clevie’s original beat for Shabba into a minimal, timbales-heavy version of the dancehall track. Recorded in Long Island’s HC&F studios, Nando Boom (b. One of these cover version/translations - of Shabba Ranks’ homophobic/anti-colonialist “Dem Bow” - is so foundational that throughout the Latin Caribbean “dembow” has become the accepted name of the marching-tempo dancehall rhythm that anchors the genre. Though Panama has its own long tradition of Afro-diasporic dance music, the love for reggae is a relic of the massive labor force that migrated from Jamaica and other islands circa 1903 to construct the Panama Canal. Before there was reggaeton, there was reggae en Espanól - a wave of Panamanian records that, as the name implies, mainly translated Jamaican boom tunes directly into Spanish to create local hits. What sort of side effects the shot will have remain to be seen but, if nothing else, let’s take the ubiquity of “Despacito” as a good excuse for a brief history lesson of the sound and its essential tunes, not to mention the different dance cultures that have fed it, from Panama to Jamaica to, um, Bollywood.
Mostly centered in Puerto Rico (and New York) the reggaeton sound has, for the most part, been bubbling along off the radar of pop culture since the last time Daddy Yankee cracked the charts circa 2005. Leaving aside the profound question of whether this pop-chart diversity could somehow be a counterweight to an emboldened nativist movement afoot in the streets, it has definitely been a shot in the arm for reggaeton, the Latin Caribbean’s particular take on dancehall reggae.
By late July, it was the most streamed song of all time.
In May of this year Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” became the first Spanish-language hit to crack the No. Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photos by Getty Images