Hip Hop Lessons for Reggaeton

I first noticed reggaeton’s infectious “BOOM-ch-boom-ch” beat in the summer of 2005, while walking through New York City during the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Crossing through the huge crowds with my roommate, I wondered why all the tricked-out trucks and lowriders were blasting the exact same song from their subwoofers. It wasn’t until I listened past the thumping bass and clockwork rhythm that I realized that I was hearing a whole genre of music; almost all reggaeton songs feature an identical drum rhythm, called “Dem Bow” after the Jamaican dancehall song it was borrowed from.

I’m a part-time party DJ, so I was embarrassed to have been so ignorant of a whole world of dance music. But I wasn’t all that late to the game. It was only in 2004 that the genre, born as “underground” music in the streets of San Juan, scored its first mainstream radio hit in the States: Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina.” The track was produced by Luny Tunes, two beatmakers who honed their hit-making skills while working in Harvard dining halls, before leaving for Puerto Rico in 2001.

As Luny and Tunes (Francisco Saldaña and Victor Cabrera, respectively) return to Harvard tomorrow night to host Presencia Latina, Harvard’s Latin American cultural festival, the music they helped to propel into the limelight has taken on an institutional legitimacy few could have anticipated just a few years ago.

In many ways, reggaeton is currently at the kind of cultural crosroads that hip-hop encountered in the mid-1980s. Now, as then, music critics are excited by the genre’s party-focused instrumentals and playful lyrics, but quick to point out a lack of complexity in hits like Wilsin y Yandel’s “Noche de Sexo” (if you need a translation, you should probably stick to Christian rock).

Another of many overlaps between the genres is the growing focus on producers as the center of musical scenes. Back in those early days of block parties, b-boys and b-girls, the early focus on DJs like Grandmaster Flash and Kool DJ Herc gave way to a more producer-centric organization as hip-hop started to have a commercial life beyond the South Bronx.

As rap radio shows and records soared in popularity, Marley Marl became the archetype of the champion beatmaker for the “Juice Crew” of rappers centered on the Queensbridge projects. Ever since, from Dr. Dre to Organized Noize, Timbaland to the Neptunes, hip-hop producers have often been just as famous as rappers, a phenomenon that Saldaña and Cabrera have brought to the reggaeton world.

Today, the duo have used their own emerging hit-making power to gather a circle of reggaeton talents around themselves with their own label, Mas Flow Inc, even branching into remixes of more established pop artists like R. Kelly and Ricky Martin.

Of course, the language barrier is one major factor keeping reggaeton from total penetration into the mainstream market in this country. Unlike many other forms of Latin music, however, most of the best reggaeton is being produced in this country (especially if you include American Commonwealth territory Puerto Rico). This American connection is one of the reasons that hip-hop has had such a big influence on the genre already, and why English words and slang phrases regularly creep into reggaeton verses.

While Luny Tunes-produced “Gasolina” might be the genre’s “Rapper’s Delight,” crossovers can happen in many directions, especially for a genre like reggaeton, at the crossroads of pop, hip-hop and more traditionally Latin and Caribbean music.

As hip-hop turns towards bare-bones snap music and syrupy “chopped and screwed” remixes of minimal thug anthems, reggaeton offers exciting instrumentals and a beat that couldn’t be much easier to synchronize on the fly.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Marley Marl and Kool G. Rap handed the reins over to DJ Premier and Nas, rap entered what many call its “golden age,” wedding abstract lyricism to street-level relevance over complex beats. With the efforts of producers like Luny Tunes and artists like Calle 13 (whose new album “Residente O Visitante” dropped on Tuesday), reggaeton seems poised to do the same.

—Staff writer Will B. Payne can be reached at payne@fas.harvard.edu.