Wisin y Yandel f. T-Pain - Imaginate

Talento de Victoria here, sorry for the lack of posts as of late.

In my opinion, reggaeton has kind of fallen off the last couple months. Spring/Summer were bountiful with new Alexis y Fido and some hot De La Ghetto remixes, but September/October have been a complete bore for me. The Amor Genuino remix with De La was fuego, but honestly I haven't been impressed with many of the offerings reggaeton has had for me lately. Maybe it's because of all the rain up here. Or it could be because all the new Daddy Yankee songs I've heard just sound like world music. F-



So last week I checked out the new WyY Imaginate with T-Pain. Just to get this out of the way, I want to say I love T-Pain, love auto-tune, and as much as I try to hate him, I hear him on a hook and go "damn, auto-tune sounds great." Saw this 1:30 clip of them making the video, T-Pain was dancing all weird and jerky, and Wisin was pretending to hold a baby and sing to it. I didn't have high hopes for the video.

They've gone ahead and proven me totally and completely wrong. Fez from 70s Show is in it, along with the hot latina Harold had a crush on in Harold & Kumar. P.s. she is THIRTY FIVE. Read it again: THIRTY FIVE, 35! My goodness. It's like she has the Benjamin Button disease and gets hotter the older she gets.

A quick summary of why this is one of the funniest videos I have ever seen:

• WyY y T-Pain at a funeral.
• Fez is hanging out in a club with WyY.
• They spot Harold's crush.
• WyY are like, "Yo Fez, hit that up homie."
• Fez macks on Harold's crush.
• Her ex, or some gangster guy spots this and get pissed!
• Harold's crush throws Fez on a bed and gives it to him raw dog (I assume).
• The gangster guy like shoots or blows up Fez or some shit in front of the motel, the entire room EXPLODES!
• A car rolls up to the gangster guy at the end of the video, window slowly rolls down, and it's WISIN Y YANDEL giving him the mean mug!
• Cuts to a shot of a WHITE ROSE on top of a casket.
• Oh shit, it's Fez that died!

Real talk though, man if that chick boned me, go ahead and kill me and blow up my motel room. The last 10 seconds of the video had me rolling on the floor. "Hey you killed our buddy, get ready for this..." *stares* "Alright Wisin, let's get out of here, our work is done."

-Talento de Victoria

Johnny Walker Black

One of the things that we have publically complained about on this site before is that Reggaeton artists are not doing enough work to shout out labels and products that we should buy. We don't speak Spanish, we need to be told what to do!

When we first got into reggaeton, we looked so hard to find the right drink for reggaeton. Naturally we thought it had to be rum, and why wouldn't we? Puerto Rico produces some of the finest rum on earth, and in the Somos De Calle Remix Daddy Yankee even talks about "hot in your chest like Anejo" which we looked up and found out was a type of rum. So we thought, to be reggaeton is to be into rum. We were wrong.

We waited so long for an answer that we almost gave up. But then we started noticing Randy y Jowell in a lot of pictures holding up a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. We were curious, but Randy y Jowell do a lot of weird stuff so maybe Jowell was just into the shape of the bottle. I mean this is a dude who appeared in numerous videos holding a Chucky Doll.

But today while watching the video for "2 Cachas" by J. Alvarez and Nejo (seen below, side note: it's HOT) I noticed that Black Label bottle showing up again. So a quick search revealed the above video of Randy y Jowell on tour where we find out that Johnny Walker is the official TOUR SPONSOR! This is a step in the right direction.

Now, this presents a double edged sword. Firstly, Estilo Blanco and Talento De Victoria both love scotch, so it's pretty sweet that the drink of reggaeton is something we already like. But the problem with Black Label is that it leaves an old man aftertaste in your mouth the next morning. The perfect solution would be if another reggaeton star would come out with a special mint for the morning after that fixed this. Because there's no way that I'm going to go buy some Orbitz or Dentyne without reggaeton approval. No way.

Until further notice, we can officially declare Johnny Walker Black the drink of reggaeton. Keep a bottle in your pantry just to be safe.

Zion y Lennox - Amor Genuino

I think it's pretty obvious that this might be the classiest reggaeton video ever. Do you know why? Because it's set in the olden days, and as a rule of thumb anything that happens in the old days is always classier than stuff that happens now. Except racism and sexism, I guess.

So this is about as mainstream as reggaeton can sound, and I'm not sure how much it works. It kind of sounds like Zion y Lennox are singing on top of a Steve Winwood track which is not that cool.

That being said, I think this song could be a pretty sweet jam for a tourism campaign for Puerto Rico. Imagine this playing on top of shots of like cliffs, and nightclubs, and beaches and awesome restaurants serving rice and beans, plantains, and all sorts of other awesome PR food.

How to make crap hip hop songs awesome

So we here listen to a LOT of Latino 96.3 and we both have the same criticism: too much English. It's really annoying to be listening to an amazing Alexis y Fido jam and have it followed up with a block of Pitbull (the worst), Soulja Boy and Drake. It actually made me hate a lot of songs and I kept thinking "why can't these songs be better?" Well, thankfully De La Ghetto was thinking the exact same thing.

I can only guess that he was chillin at home being like "man, I need to rescue these songs, but how?" Then he was hit with a flash of brilliance when he was doing something cool (breakfast? threesome? parade? we will never know). The eureka moment was his realization "oh yeah, I'll just record these songs in Spanish." And like MAGIC they are 1000% better.

This transformation takes place for a number of reasons:
1. Songs are always better in Spanish (no exceptions)
2. Most rappers/RnB stars use autotune in the subtle way because they can't sing (looking at you Drake), but De Le Ghetto can sing like a CHAMPION without autotune, without over production. So the song immediately has more passion, feeling, and sex appeal.
3. There are no rappers/RnB artists as cool as De La Ghetto.

Above is the De La Ghetto remix of Best I ever Had, and oh my god it's incredible. I sort of liked the song before but now I love it. Below is "Kiss me thru the phone" by Soulja Boy which SUCKED, but now it's pretty sweet. I wish that De La Ghetto would cover any song by Neyo, So Anxious by Genuine, Remix to Ignition by R. Kelly, and EVERYTHING by Boyz II Men.

Constructive Criticism

Imagine our surprise to find a comment not left by either myself or Estilo Blanco! But wait... I sense a tone of dissention...


First off, we are both major blanquitos. We are not trying to hide this fact.

Second, I said Guelo is a TEMPORARY enemy of reggaeton. As in, literally for the day it was posted and that's it. We personally hate reggae and state that in the post. If anything, it was just a funny way for us to trash reggae, not an attack on Guelo at all. I acknowledged that Guelo Star is a major contributor to reggaeton/dembow and is a sick lyricist. I have the Pelicula Viviente Sincero mixtape and love it!

Think of it this way: it’s like when Russians first got into Rock n Roll after the end of the USSR, they didn't know what they were doing but they rocked so fucking hard because they loved it so much. Or the Japanese getting into hip hop, they were a bit confused but that just led to them taking it in new directions. So it's bout learning (and I guess globalization.)

No matter what we do we will always be wannabe PRs, it’s not our fault, it’s our ethnicity’s.

We also acknowledge that we can’t know everything about reggaeton, we are white (well, one of us is half-chinese, even worse! except in the case of De La Ghetto), don’t speak spanish (yet), and appreciate any and all clarifications or knowledge from legit latinos. In fact, we have asked for it in past posts!

Lastly, this site isn’t very serious and we are joking about most of the stuff here (except our love and pasion for Reggaeton). This is a guide to help white people get into reggaeton, it can be very daunting if all you have are white friends who love indie rock and hipster electronica. We have nothing but love for latinos and all reggaeton culture, even if it includes reggae. Although, I thought all reggae was good for was asking someone if they are into reggaeton and they say “yes, I like Bob Marley,” then you diss them.

White people like getting all hung up on genre names. We don't want to divide and chop it up in to romantiqueo, bachata, etc. We also don't want to call it "Latin Music" or else white people will think it's Gypsy Kings and that World Music that they like so much. We need to use a term they've heard and use that to get them interested.

If you think about it, we are like white people in 1984 who were legitimately into hip-hop. Those people turned into all the white rappers from the 90’s on, or janitors.

P.s. Thank you for calling me papi!

-Talento de Victoria

Temporary Enemy of Reggaeton: Guelo Star

Before you get all mad at me, I do realize Guelo Star is always putting it down for dembow and is supposedly one of the best lyricists (if I knew spanish I could confirm this), but here he does a straight REGGAE track. In the world of Solo Para Reggaeton, this is a huge no no.

Adding insult to injury he posts this on his facebook page:



Google Translate tells us this means "FOR FANS OF "ROOTS REGGAE" AQUI EL NUEVO TEMA DE "Newton FEAT: Guelo Star REVIVE THE ROOTS OF" GANYA "JAJAJAJA! AQUI LES DEJO" GIRL Addicts' GARMENTS AND A Blunt Listen to him JAJAJAJA TRIP IN ONE LOVE Guelo Star"

ONE LOVE? Really... really? This goes against everything we stand for. This is two strikes, roots AND reggae as a genre, three if you add in One Love.

Guelo Star, we like and respect your contributions to reggaeton, but please keep them there. You are getting a free pass this time. If you have to stray from the genre, at least do american r&b covers like de la ghetto. We don't mind those.

My First Exposure to Reggaeton

My first exposure to reggaeton was on a trip to Cuba (I know... not PR but give me a break, I am from the Pac NW, I admit full ignorance) about 4 years ago. I was listening to A LOT of Three 6 Mafia at the time, and occasionally would hear these spanish rap songs down there (which were actually reggaeton but I didn't know any better) that had samples of guns cocking. This was relevant to my interests.

I searched and asked around for the song with the gun noises, but no one could help me. Eventually someone told me about this group called Cubanito 20.02 that was reggaeton. I guess they were really big in Cuba at the time. Back then, I didn't even know what reggaeton was, I thought it would just be called like cuban rap (or latin rap).

I was pretty into it, the raps were tight, but I just couldn't get over the singing and the silly drum beats, I was looking for something more agresivo. Also, there is one guy in the group who does that thing where you rap and kind of sound like a big dog; it reminded me too much of real reggae.

Anyways, I bought the CD and pretended to be into it so I could look worldly when I returned to BC. Most people liked it, usually girls, and it was fun to drink in the sun and listen to it.

We still didn't know what reggaeton was, so anything that sounded like it we would just call "Soy Cubanito," which was the title of the album.

About 3 years ago, the original CD (with case) was stolen out of my old 1986 Acura Legend, by who I imagine was a street person, in Victoria, BC.

If that guy didn't pawn the CD, he probably had a huge boner after listening to it. I like to imagine that somewhere in Victoria is a homeless person who reps a tropical island lifestyle due to the theft, even though he is in Victoria, BC. He lives in a cardboard city, but with lots of like fake palm trees, drink umbrellas, and loud shirts. Oh, of course, braids as well.

Since then, I am pretty proud to call myself a reggaeton listener and have learned so much! I have probably 20 reggaeton songs with gun samples in them now. It's too bad Pitbull is from Cuba because listening to Soy Cubanito now I realize they aren't that bad; however, I am at a point in my life right now where listening to any kind of Cuban artist translates into direct support for Pitbull, so I can't do that.

Reggaeton has shown me that it's ok to be a pussy, as long as you are also a thug. North American rap is all about being tough, all the time, which is really unrealistic! Thugs cry too, and fall in love, which is why reggaeton is perfect. North American rap is full of static characters, whereas reggaeton is about being dynamic and multi-dimensional.

Who knew that 4 years ago, a simple purchase would indirectly change my life forever? Not me!

-Talento de Victoria