Big Daddy

Daddy Yankee is so the bomb he's beyond being the bomb. He has enveloped us in the bomb. He is the ontology of bomb. There's something spookily familiar about him, probably just a sense of familia. Those sad eyes, like a forgotten second cousin. When I showed up at his hotel, it was the usual coterie of hangers-on and waiting press. The questions and responses here reveal a bit of what's behind the reggaeton phenomenon, but I wish it could have been a little deeper. At any rate, here is the mostly unexpurgated Daddy and his thoughts about hiphop, reggaeton, flow, and the way life is.


Spangilshkid
Tell me what barrio you're from, and what that means

Daddy Yankee
I’m from las lomas de Puerto Rico, from Villa Kennedy, a housing project. I grew up with hiphop and that’s where the majority of hiphop artists come from, the projects. The reality is that the ghetto of New York compared to the one over there, what they have here are castles compared to what we have over there. The struggle over there is double what you have here. It’s harder over there. So you learn about everything. You learn how to be a young rebel and you learn how to be an astute young person. It’s the best of both worlds you learn in the barrio there.

Spanglishkid
How did poetry come into your life--I hear some of the sound of the urban poetry of Puerto Rico, like Gallego.

Daddy Yankee
Gallego is my boy. All the inspiration of the barrio follows me. It’s all from the point of view from which you see things. Your personal witnessing. And let them out in your work. That’s how I’ve learned to do it. For me all of the barrio inspires me, it's the inspiration of the barrio. It has that spirit that moves you. It moves you to create something that is very hard to find in other places. I for example when I’m going to make music, I need to hang around my barrio, or talk with someone, or someone will tell me something to inspire me. If I don’t have that it’s hard for me to be motivated to do something. It’s my roots and if I lose that connection my music is not going to have the same impact that it did. I love to have that present and that’s why I love being in Puerto Rico and see what happens day to day. But when I travel, I learn about other places. I have the opportunity now to see the barrios of other countries, which is what I love most. Those barrios in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico. Now I’m going to Ecuador and I want them to take me. People usually say take me to this place, where it’s nice, but I’m totally different, I say, take me to see the local barrio. That way I can talk to the young people there and I’ve learned that we go through the same thing but in different scenarios. But we Latinos are very similar in our basics, our religion, our way of orienting ourselves, you follow? And the problems that we have are almost the same.

Spanglishkid
It's a different generation now. In the past people would play their folkloric music or local music and it wouldn't be so universal. Of course the Colombians have always liked salsa, but...

Daddy Yankee
We are the new soneros from the barrio. If you look at it, what’s happening with us is the same that was happening with salsa. In those times Puerto Rico and Latinos had a music that spoke about what was real. So you had Ismael, Rubén Blades, El Gran Combo, singing songs about the barrio, singing about Juanito Alimaña, all that. They’re songs that you hear that are immortal, songs like "Pedro Navaja," that are songs about characters from the barrio. No one else in those times dared to sing about such things. And the salseros spoke for the people. So now there’s a new generation that asked for a musical change, you follow? It’s reggaetón but it’s urban too. In reggaetón we talk about everything, about the way we look, the way we dance, the way we drink, how we conquer the girls, how the girls like to do things (laughs). We don’t limit ourselves. We talk about the government, we talk about who’s the baddest. Life, you know what I mean? For a lot of us, we understand that these are lyrics about the street.

Spanglishkid
Explain your musical trajectory a little. Tego told me he started with hiphop and didn't want to do reggaetón because it was too commercial.

Daddy Yankee
I started doing hiphop in the beginning. The new generation of Puerto Rico grew up with reggaetón. But my generation, Tego’s, Vico, we started doing hardcore hiphop because it was the music that existed in Puerto Rico. Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Run DMC, Nas, Dr. Dre. That’s when I grew up. When I was 11 or 12 years old that’s what I was listening to, hiphop. But when the wave of reggae from Panama and Jamaica both came at the same time what happened was Jamaican dancehall and reggae en Español wiped out hiphop among Puerto Ricans. Why? Because hiphop is something you can write, but the big pastime of Latinos is that we like to rumba. We are children of la rumba. When people play drums, it’s part of our culture—if you play percussion, it gets our attention right away. It automatically eliminated hiphop’s popularity. It was a music with good lyrics and very danceable. When we saw that we realized there wasn’t so much interest in hiphop here anymore. What kids want to do is dance and hear danceable music. We started to incorporate the ideas we had doing hiphop with the base of dancehall and reggae en Español. So that’s how we created the phenomenon of reggaetón.

Spanglishkid
What about the new album you have coming out this fall?

Daddy Yankee
Right now I’m finishing up Barrio Fino en Directo, and it has what is direct about me, it’s live. It has a DVD included and six unissued songs. Then after that I have the album that’s called El Cartel. That’s a musical trasiego. Because of what’s happened to me, my music is now worldwide. I called it that because, the concept is that the cartel is something Latino. Every country has a cartel. So I’m bringing my music to the world, in my next record. I’m going to have a lot of reggaetón, plus other influences like from Spain, flamenco, more hiphop, the theme of the heart, because people know I’m a writer as well. So the people knowing that about me have demanded more hiphop. So it’s going to be a good balance. It’s going to be released in March or April.

Spanglishkid
Who's going to be collaborating with you?

Daddy Yankee
Right now we’re in negotiations with Ludacris as collaborator. For El Cartel we have other ideas, strong ideas like the artists I grew up with, like Willie. Willie is a person who is always close to me, I’ve always said he was my favorite Latino artist. I told him personally. If you could see his face an mine, we look alike. He inspired me the way he did his album covers, they were always real street. I always identified with Willie Colon.

Spanglishkid
He told me once he invented gangsta rap.

Daddy Yankee
I can believe it.

Spanglishkid
Do you have family in New York?

Daddy Yankee
I have cousins in New York. I lived a short time here in the Bronx and Brooklyn.

Spanglishkid
What do you think about the phenomoenon of Nuyoricans and island Puerto Ricans, and how they're moving together because of urban culture?

Daddy Yankee
We had a lot of radio stations in Puerto Rico but now we have the acceptance of the Latino who was raised in the U.S. It’s the final vote that puts the seal of approval on reggaetón. A lot of people, at first the genre didn’t have the popularity it does now. A lot of people didn’t feel it. Now with the evolution of the rhythms, the quality of hiphop done in reggaetón. We love hiphop but we love reggaetón as well. That whole thing about Nuyoricans, the Dominicans who were raised here, the Colombians raised here have given a lot of support to our genre. I’ve been around for years and it’s now that I’m getting all this media attention. Doing performances here, Boston, and Springfield, and in stadiums. We get to a place and they say “who are these crazy guys”? It’s just that they don’t know. All these were very important factors, the people who were raised here, the Latinos, felt pride in the rappers and the reggaetón artists from the island. Because they’re not corny, they’re not wack. You can put the biggest hiphop artist next to us, and the flow is the same. You put Daddy Yankee with whatever hiphop artist and my flow is going to be of the same category. A Tego Calderón, Eddie Dee, Voltio. You take Ivy Queen and a Lil’ Kim…That’s what happened with the Latin flavor. And now they say wow, because we’re hard too. And now they have someone to identify with. The adolescent kid in school is now growing up with the genre. I’ve seen kids of 13 or 14 years of age getting into reggaetón in a different way from kids who are twentysomething. I’ve seen African Americans saying, man, this kid is good. Now we come with a feeling of pride that is stronger than the kid who didn’t grow up with reggaetón.

Spanglishkid
Do you think it will take the involvement of African-American rappers to help reggaeton go mainstream?

Daddy Yankee
Well I’m here without the help of an African American rapper. What we need is more support from Latinos, because here there are 50 million Latinos. We need about 5% of that. I know they’re there. We want them to get into the music and feel proud, that’s all we need.

Spanglishkid
It's not just street kids that are into the genre, it's secretaries, middle-class people.

Daddy Yankee
The people that love us most are the women. There are so many bad things you see on the news these days, but with reggaetón you can escape, it liberates your life. To stop it will be very difficult.

Spanglishkid
You mentioned Ludacris, who has a very successful film career. Would you be interested in that?

Daddy Yankee
We are working on the movie “Straight From the Barrio.” It features most of the artists of the genre. Maestro, Eddie D., TNT, everybody. You have to do a little of everything. I produce my records, that’s the way I am. Everything else is secondary to music, but I don’t limit myself to anything. If I got a chance to do acting I’d do it tomorrow. If someone wants to go to the moon and you make me an astronaut, Daddy Yankee will reach the moon. That’s the way I am. But I feel a love for music that is very natural. Getting away from music would be very hard.

Spanglishkid
Do you see the day when the biggest reggaetón rappers are no longer from Puerto Rico?

Daddy Yankee
This is a Latino movement. Right now the best known artists are Puerto Rican. But the most famous producers, Luny Tunes, are Dominican. The one I have, DJ Urba, who is going to be famous, is Domincan too. If you go to South America there are great producers in Honduras, Colombia, and there are a lot of good rappers in Honduras and the Dominican Republic. `