Urbano Reached Critical Mass in 2018. Now Can It Be Normalized?
Cardi B’s Instagram typically serves as a roving press conference on personal matters, quelling rumors of infidelity or amplifying existing beefs. But on a recent live video, she addressed dembow fans directly. Devotees of the genre—a sparse Dominican creation based on the same Jamaican riddim as reggaetón but led by faster BPMs and more sample-based production—were upset about her collaboration with dembow ambassador El Alfa. Their song “Mi Mami” is the sunny, lighthearted reggaetón number that few expected.
“It’s like, ‘OK, let’s play the game they play and make reggaetón/trap and then we’ll hit them with dembow,” Cardi explained in Spanish as her SUV moved along. “I knew that the people wanted a dembow with me and El Alfa. But [we chose to make] a song that’d take off and then when people find out [about El Alfa], that’s when we’ll give them a dembow.”
Bardi’s takeover plan seems sound, especially after a blockbuster year for música urbana (or just urbano). Encompassing genres like reggaetón, dembow, Latin trap, champeta, and certain styles of bachata, urbano built on the 2017 success of Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” by redefining what it means to make Spanish-language music in the American mainstream. The rigid genre lines and calculated English-language crossovers of the past are gone, and what remains is a movement that’s bigger than many listeners even realize. Moving between reggaetón and dembow is a small step when you’re aiming for global domination.
This year’s numbers suggest urbano is not so far off from that: The three most-streamed artists on Youtube worldwide were Ozuna, J Balvin, and Bad Bunny. On YouTube’s official song of the summer ranking, the top spot went to Cardi’s “I Like It,” which features Balvin and Bunny spitting in Spanish atop Latin boogaloo samples. Rounding out the streaming giant’s SOTS tally was the remix for “Te Boté,” originally by Puerto Rican rappers Nio García, Darell, and Casper Mágico and transformed into a hypnotizing Latin posse cut featuring Bad Bunny, Ozuna, Nicky Jam, and not a single word in English; if you look at YouTube’s summer stats globally (instead of just America), “Te Boté” jumps from No. 9 to No. 1.
After a banner year, it was no surprise when Bad Bunny took a televised victory lap, including a spot in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a halftime show on “Monday Night Football.” Both performances were met with Twitter outcry: Some bemoaned their inability to understand Bad Bunny’s lyrics, while others simply questioned his booking. It’s clear that what some of these folks meant was that someone more, well, white fit their conceptions of these American institutions, rather than the country’s multilingual reality. In past decades, Spanish-language stars on that large a platform might have gone the fiery-Latino-crosses-over route—and for understandable reason. As journalist Isabelia Herrera noted in a recent op-ed, “It seems Latino pop stars are only seen through the lens of crossover culture—that is, the mainstream media tends to only cover them when they make an impact on Anglo audiences, using Anglo metrics of success.”
Nearly every Anglo metric of success—from chart performance to sold-out shows coast to coast—has been met and exceeded by urbano’s biggest artists in the last few years. The accolades still to come are those controlled by the white music industry, from the critical engine of the music press to award institutions like the Grammys. (Even the Latin Grammys often snub urbano, speaking to a larger history of Latin-American classism and racism.) There seems to be an expectation of a “Despacito” moment every time—an impossible-to-miss crossover that proves urbano’s definitive arrival, again and again. But this isn’t a crossover—it’s organic growth with no clear sign of a ceiling. Urbano has been and will continue to be here.
In some ways, we owe this moment to reggaetón’s first big American breakthrough in the mid-’oos, when Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Ivy Queen, and Tego Calderón led a charge that spread the genre far outside the marginalized communities that fostered it. Stateside, albums like Yankee’s Barrio Fino and Omar’s The Last Don went platinum and gold, respectively, allowing stars to infiltrate mainstream media without sacrificing their language and riddims. Unlike the Latin explosion stars of the late ’90s, reggaetón artists did not perform their Latino identities for a white lens, thus reinventing the way English-speaking audiences engaged with Latin music. Anyone frequenting the clubs back in 2005 likely remembers frat bros belting out mispronounced renditions of “Gasolina.”
Urbano’s current wave builds on that unabashed approach with a significant update: The biggest stars refuse to tether themselves to a single style. While it’s not unheard of for reggaetóneros to collaborate outside the genre—a pivotal moment in bringing reggaetón to the U.S. was DJ Playero’s 1997 album Boricua Guerrero: First Combat, featuring Nas, Busta Rhymes, and other New York rap favorites alongside a nascent Yankee—but what’s happening right now feels different, more organic. The brand of reggaetón currently dominating the charts—heard in Ozuna and Cardi B’s “La Modelo” and Yankee’s “Dura”—highlights a noticeable level of hybridity with Jamaican dancehall. With its reggae-style keyboards, “Dura” might actually be considered more akin to dancehall if it weren’t for Yankee’s reputation as the king of reggaetón.
Likewise, Bad Bunny may be leading the charge for Latin trap, but his biggest hit as a lead performer, “MIA” featuring Drake, and his latest single, “Solo de Mí,” are reggaetón songs. And El Alfa might be a dembow favorite, but his most recent album, El Hombre, leads listeners through a wide-ranging urbano primer of sorts.
We see this wide-open approach further reflected in urbano’s robust underground scene, which provides a steady pipeline of talent while bringing more outré ideas to the surface. Tomasa del Real’s latest release, 2018’s Bellaca del Año, saw the veritable underground veteran level up on production quality, with help from urbano legends like DJ Blass and Toy Selectah. This marked a big come up for neoperreo, the hashtag-turned-movement created by del Real in 2014 to denote a new wave of reggaetón, marked by darker production and its rise outside of established channels. Building on Ivy Queen’s message of women’s empowerment, del Real’s brand of reggaetón also puts female pleasure first. And she’s not the only one: Tokischa examines the social norms of women in her native Dominican Republic through a sativa-imbued slant on Latin hip-hop and trap. Her open love of weed and strong sense of agency push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable behavior for a woman in the DR.
For 2019 to be urbano’s year of normalization, not only do mainstream institutions need to change the way they think about Latin music—urbano gatekeepers and listeners need to move beyond the big hits they already know and love, toward more emerging artists. As journalist Gary Suarez recently pointed out, despite the movement’s growth, there’s real stagnation on urbano-heavy charts. “Despacito” has overstayed its welcome on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs tally for a mind-numbingly mundane 100 weeks, while “MIA,” “Te Boté,” and DJ Snake’s “Taki Taki” continue to command the top spots.
Bad Bunny’s just-dropped debut album, X100PRE, is already proving to be the artistic success El Conejo Malo hoped for—which might help jolt wider industry ideas about “crossover” moments. A bold statement from someone who doesn’t cater to Anglo-centric views of Latinx identity, X100PRE could hold the key to urbano’s wider critical acclaim. After hearing this sprawling full-length from one of the year's biggest breakout stars, the mainstream media should have no choice but to take urbano seriously as another pillar of American pop. (Dembow fans, in particular, will be pleased: El Alfa scored one of just two credited vocal features on the record, showing off the style for which he’s best known.)
No matter how urbano’s mass normalization unfolds, one thing is abundantly clear: ya ‘tamos ready.
