other than you, something brand new:

Pretty much it though. via wayneandwax



  1. ian on Monday 26, 2009

    Here’s the difference: if hip hop was as stagnant as reggaeton, all the songs would have the exact same beat and that beat would be “Lean Back” ‘cos that’s how static reggaeton is. Nothing seems to have changed since “Gasolina” which was out about the same time as “Lean Back.”

  2. G on Monday 26, 2009

    i disagree that reggaeton is static because songs carry the similar if not the same beat and/or rhythmic pattern. that would be like saying all salsa is the same, wouldn’t it?

  3. w&w on Monday 26, 2009

    or all reggae is the same, or all soca, or all techno, or all any music that i don’t listen to enough to pick up on anything but superficial structural elements.

    anyone who says that reggaeton is static hasn’t been paying much attn. for ex’s –
    http://wayneandwax.com/?p=151
    http://wayneandwax.com/?p=375

    thx 4 the linkage — actually what’s funny about vico’s “reggaeton” example, though, is that he’s basically doing an early 90s dancehall beat (the “bam bam” riddim, i suspect), which was very popular in PR underground/proto-reggaeton but doesn’t sound much like more recent stuff, which is markedly slower (and closer to the tempo of the hip-hop beat he, um, boxes)

  4. chaser on Monday 26, 2009

    I’m probally the only puertorican that can’t stand reggaeton! Even when el general from panama was doing it back in the early 90s. fuck that.

  5. G on Monday 26, 2009

    word. thanks for articulating that w&w. i have many friends who just don’t get reggaeton for similar reasons.

    i would also say the most popular “reggaeton” today has trended towards hip-hop rhythms. but the earlier stuff i remember being more like actual “reggae”. back then we thought of it just as reggae in spanish.

    then again, i’m not so up on the variety of artists, only what i hear on the radio. and on that note, surprisingly, i’m visiting miami currently and noticing that the stations are not as into drowning their listenership with the stuff. 5 years ago or so it seemed that’s all you would hear.

  6. G on Monday 26, 2009

    funny cause we just received this promo from sony/bmg where the subject line reads” Its Latin, Its Hip-Hop, Its Reagge” (typo inlcuded) and they link to LDA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7MqO_yVPKA

    yet after watching the promo i don’t think of them as any of those things. and especially after watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KzPtd813r4 and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph4Hjs05Z6I

  7. w&w on Monday 26, 2009

    wow, those last two examples are definitely outliers, more like rock and r&b, respectively.

    but i don’t have any problem thinking of LDA, or reggaeton, as latin, hip-hop, and reggae (the misspelling, unwittingly?, harkens back to the ol’ playero days of “non-stop reegae“).

    even in the old “underground” days, though, it was still a pretty even mix of hip-hop and reggae (if anything the “latin” stuff has been a more recent addition). check those early playero mixtapes and you’ll hear it alternating back and forth between reggae and hip-hop loops.