Daddy Yankee Go Home

It's all over the news cycle right now, but this is disappointing news. DY was a gracious interview subject and he at least has ideas about what could happen with reggaeton, but this endorsing McCain move, done at an Arizona high school today, is embarrassing. Speculation about how this was orchestrated is already raging. I guess my favorite conspiracy theory would some how tie the late "Coquito," the late Puerto Rican drug dealer who was also a reggaeton impresario and apparently friends with two PNP (statehood party) politicians to both McCain and Yankee. 

         It's not a stretch to link alleged Coquito associate Héctor Martínez Maldonando, the senator from the Puerto Rican town of Carolina to the McCain effort, since much of his party is behind the Arizona senator. But DY rival Don Omar has been more strongly associated with Coquito. Still it seems like strange bedfellows. 

         I could spout outrage about DY, and how this sort of stuff is proof of his weasely PNP sellout loyalty, or that the whole Torres de Sabana thing should have been ample warning about his lack of authenticity and culture-stealing ways. But seriously, it's so unusual for a music or film megastar to have coherent politics that I'm not shocked. Tego knew this from the beginning and that's why he's scaled back his expectations since the first major label deal soured on him. Interesting to see how Calle 13's political stridency holds up in their new album expected in October.

          Did I talk about race yet? Well that's probably the most troubling aspect of all of this. DY is simultaneously the biggest and "lightest" reggaeton star, something many observers don't think is a coincidence. Is this just another example of Latinos (Hispanics?) failing to warm up to Obama over race? If it is, frankly it's nauseating.