декември 21 2004 PULL UP OUR PANTS: Reggaeton Breakdown
In the Patois Buffer Override
sidebar, Sizzle wrote: "I really wish more people would pick up on the
dances to go with songs thing outside of the dancehall world. A weird
and conflicted example is the Terror Squad's recent Super Hit 'Lean
Back' with the hook 'my niggas don't dance we just pull up our pants
and do the rockaway, now lean back...' Simultaneously instigating a
dance craze and pre-empting the possible rise of others through the
espousal of the coolness of non-dancing. Something I strongly disagree
with." Me too.
In the face of too-cool-to-dancedom, this “Lean
Back” reggaeton remix, like the genre in general, does what's
necessary: blasts away any ambivalence about dancing/non-dancing with a
crazy infectious beat. No sé que pasa y lo siento mucho pero este 12"
doesn't credit the female MC; the dude is Miami's Pitbull.
Reggaeton is basically latino party music. But
unlike straight-up salsa or merengue or pop, it borrows heavily from
hiphop, and the basic beat pattern came from late 80s, early 90s
Jamaican reggae riddims. (Like Chaka Demus & Pliers' hit "Murder
She Wrote").
I first heard about reggaeton about 6 years ago from
a friend in Puerto Rico, I think he described it as sounding like
low-BPM techno with reggae bass. (It's true: If reggaeton had no
snares, it would be slow techno, drum kick steady on the four.) I lived
in NYC's Lower East Side for a minute in 2002 and reggaeton was the
default soundtrack for my Puerto Rican neighbor's late-nite llello
reveries and mid-morning ex- arguments, so basically I heard way more than I needed to.
This year was hot because reggaeton began appearing
on vinyl, fully entering that slipstream of greasyfingers and mix&scratch
mentalities. A lot of hiphop-reggaeton connects became overt,
aboveground--- N.O.R.E.'s work, heavyhitter Tego Calderón over rap beats, and,
usefully, umpteen dozen reggaeton - hiphop - reggae bootleg 12"s.
Pitbull's (thoroughly legal) "Culo" jam best embodies the crosstalk.
He rhymes in Spanish & English over Scatta Burrell's "Coolie Dance"
riddim from Kingston (via imaginary India I think), with Lil Jon giving
his trademark Southern monosyllabic support. YEAH!
Anyhow this excellent energetic Lean Back remix cuts
between 2 reggaeton patterns and the original, using DJish
beatscratches, triplet hits, horns stabs, and the occasional Lil Jon
sample. You put the record on & peope think you're getting busy
behind the decks.
Taking a few steps atrás, the trend this tune & "Culo"
represent---everybody talking to each other, then harmonizing (then cashing checks)---made 2004
nice. It wasn't really a year of hot genres, but one of hot genre
slippage. Like every East Coast head looking south--Miami,
Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica. Like grime looking crunkwards. When I saw
Dizzee Rascal, he spat over only two beats that weren't his: southern
US hiphop anthems "Tipsy" (J-Kwon) & "Like A Pimp" (David Banner).
This hot genre slippage/crosstalk wasn't just
confined to vocalists marketed as 'street'; my friend Kid606 recorded
with warped ragga heroes Ward 21 & started a label called Shockout
where indy beat producers do proper (ie not thefty bootlegs) collabos
with reggae vocalists. Some people I know in L.A. are banging out
funky intersections between reggaeton, hiphop, and
drum&bass--crucially, using the last two genres as spices and the
first one as the main dish. That's the most radical element of
reggaeton--whereas so much pop dresses itself in fake ethnic trappings
(and I love it, ¡viva Timba-tunes!), reggaeton is a the latest
development in a long history of Afro-Antillean music, and its
outsider, 'exotic' elements stem from mainstream hiphop & reggae.
Hiphop posturing and pungent machismo remain intact but the obvious
compositional elements of rap music get drowned out or submerged within
reggaeton's loud Hispanic Caribbean logic. ¿Sabes lo que te digo? You
feel it when music
lives local & sees no need to translate itself.
If I squint hard and go to the right wrong
neighborhoods, if I shoot my television and refuse to read the
newspaper, America can seem suddenly bilingual, difference-embracing,
willingly desegregating, a place where dimwit notions supporting
immigrant/native dichotomies and hyphenated identities grow unfamiliar
rather than de rigeur.
Then reality hits me upside the head.
Justin () (URL) - декември 21 2004
Hey Jace, reading your blog with interest regularly. My first music purchase in Japan was your Minesweeper Suite at Jetset Records in Kyoto (worth checking if you're in the area). It was the perfect soundtrack to my overwhelming feelings of sensory overload upon first arriving here. Bought everything of yours I could get my hands on since.
Your backpage article in the Wire a while back was one of the best pieces of personal journalism I read in such a long time. Tracing your musical influences was such a fine lesson in print for me.
Living as an expatriate American in Osaka for the past two years I've been trying to adapt to life in a foreign culture ....and hopefully making some art while I'm at it. I'm quite interested in your experience in Madrid....Would you mind sharing a bit on how and why you moved there and if and how has it made its way into or affected your work?
If this message is coming across too dry or didactic, my apologies. ( I can make no claims towards street cred). Anyway, keep up the good work....and if you get a chance to visit my sites (primarily focused on street photography / video in Osaka) please do
http://www.iamelliptical.com and
http://bug.fotopages.com thanks Justin Lincoln
oh, and thanks for the mp3 posts too. keep'em coming, ne.
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sizzle red eye - декември 22 2004
whooooooo!
this is the jumpoff, especially the intro. Dope edits and triplet fills on the reggaeton beat. This cat pitbull is decent, not bad. Wierd spanish/southern drawl going on. Tuff tune tho, necessary for any kind of lean back medley.
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rafi b () (URL) - декември 23 2004
what is fascinating to me is that reggae toasting and hip hop rhyming have become templates for what you can do with language and rhythm -- and that they have been picked up by everyone from beijing to budapest and reinterpreted for local purposes.
in other words, reggaeton is just the spanish-speaking contingent of an international phenomena. if you want to see what i mean just check out taraf de haidouk's "carolina" -- where rumanian gypsy meets turkish dancehall meets macedonian brass -- and you end up with the hypest dancehall that side of the bosporus. check out youcef boukella (later of orchestre national de barbes) doing "salaam," toasting like an algerian fiend:
"t'fadal ya shiekh ya mrezan el kelam / aleyha t'wulit w'na mejani menam / k'tab le breehay beehay wussal el salaam"
here is the deal: whereas older song forms tended to blur the distinction between languages and the character of languages that make them so unique, toasting and rhyming bring these characteristics to the fore. in pop songs everything is flattened -- the way people always say the beatles sound so american when they sing. but there is no mistaking dizee rascal as anything but british -- in rhyming and toasting, the language cannot hide behind melisma, it must bare its gutturals and glottal stops, its elongated vowels and nasalizaztions.
language diversity is disappearing at a much faster rate than biodiversity -- and with it an immense store of cultural knowledge that these disappearing languages contain. although some might argue that toasting and rhyming going international is just another global phenomena threatening to overrun indigenous forms -- i suggest that maybe it's an opportunity for the less pop-pervasive languages of the world to compete and survive.
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sizzler chain restaraunt iodine poisoning - декември 24 2004
I agree that the rise of people like Dizzee Dizz, Tego, Banner et al embracing all the artifacts of their own language/dialect/accent and pushing that to the fore is a very positive development. Something that has been a great victory for cultural/musical diversity this decade is the rise of Crunk in the South, Dancehall in JA, Reggaeton from PR, DR, Grime in London etc and the fact that the existing New York hiphop monoculture was not only challenged but practically pushed off the dancefloors of the world. Now that's it's in the process of being forced to reinvent itself looking outwards I feel it's claims of being the only source of hiphop cultural authenticity are now made totally irrelevant and will be almost impossible to reassert. Which I am thrilled about. I vote death to the NY hiphop hate-opoly, even if I am geographically located here, or maybe because of that fact.
And a question for my spanish speakers: what does 'Tra' mean in the reggaeton context? Is it just like 'Go! go!' or what? I hear it repeated so often on these tracks.
And re: your last thoughts about integration etc. I'd say a lot these current musical developments ARE pushing us in that direction, cross pollination between geographically and linguistically disparate groups etc, even though there is a LONG way to go. I feel hiphop really has become a force for humanization and symphathization between white, black and everyone in between.. I know that it has worked that way for myself as a white guy, I've definitely met more people from different backgrounds through music one way or another (whether listening, dancing, making) than through most other avenues (admittedly I am a musician so spend a lot of time doing that anyway).. I have also observed it through people I know, female hiphop and reggae fans who now have had the black is beautiful idea drilled into them by all these music videos and are thereby able to overcome a lot of the fear-programming that seperates many of us. Of course this can also be a form of exotification that has it's own pitfalls but the fact that it means white people are now interested enough to overcome their societally encouraged fear of talking to people of different races I think is a very positive thing.
Also: anyone seen the new Slim Thugg video? He's a houston TX based member of the Swisha House and Screwed Up cliques. I'm reminded of it because Paul Wall's (sounds like Pow Wow) ice grilling high school football quarterback fashion statements are a funny and interesting ruralistic addition to the library of whiteboy hiphop visual iconography. Also there's a really beautiful shot of Michael Watts dressed in black and white with his lone, black clad booty-shake girl, and his decks setup in the front yard of a dirty white shack. The girl is obviously some real person in Watt's life since she doesn't look like a flossy-fine video hoe. The look of fierce and serious pride in her face as she shakes it for her man and the image and honor of the Swisha House clique stuck in my mind and I found very affecting.
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j greasy - декември 26 2004
a few Slim Thug (jus one g, G) videos here, but maybe not the one u mention Sizzl?
http://www.slimthugthaboss.com/downloads..
gotta go douse the katydids in gasoline, more later
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sizzlene tv product - декември 27 2004
Found the video I was talking about, turns out it was a Swishahouse group video, not a slim thug solo. The tune is called 'Still Tippin' And the video is at the bottom of the page linked below, along with a bunch of other videos that look pretty interesting.
http://www.iap-tv.com/video.htm- - - - - - - -
Alberto - декември 29 2004
"And a question for my spanish speakers: what does 'Tra' mean"
A few years back, Don Chezina made the phrase popular by making a reggaeton song that only said "Tra" for 3 minutes.
I have heard some people say that the original Tra song is a DJ mix of a live performance where Chezina was imitating the sounds of the snare drum. This makes sense because the reggaeton pattern usually has a drumroll at the the eight beat. One can imitate the drumroll saying "traaa".
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sizzling spilled coffee - януари 1 2005
alberto: thanks for the clarification, I think I have this song you're talking about on a compilation, totally manic repetitive insanity. Was delighted to find it among the more regular offerings, always happy to hear someone releasing something totally stupid and crazy and calling it music.
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miguel () - януари 15 2005
reggaeton has even spread all de way 2 stockholm, sweden and its latino-population ( and de others 2, i guess ) there are even groups, for example tristes tigres. check it out here.
http://www.tristestigres.com- - - - - - - -
djharold () - февруари 3 2005
we have reggaeton snares, kicks, soundlibraries full, demos, etc...
http://users.cjb.net/libreriasdereggaeto..- - - - - - - -
distant lover () - февруари 21 2005
I really like reggaeton. yo no se si ustedes, pero yo si. A mi lo unico que se me hce weird is that sometimes they be sayin words like bellaqueo, and crap like that. I don't noe si esas son palabras in puerto rico, but i aint never heard those words before at my country.
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JOCELINE () - април 5 2005
YO WATZ GOOD,
I LOVE REGGAETON , I'M PUERTORICAN SO I GOTTA LOVE DAT SHIT IIGHT BYE BYE!!! 1 =-)
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Cici () - април 16 2005
hey que pasa gente? anyways i read some of these posts and i think some of the stuff that was said is interesting. first off let me put in my definition of the famous phrase TRA! tra to me is like a hit, you know the sound of a hit kind of the spanish "translation" hehe for BAM! you know what i mean? also other words like bellaquo, jaqear, and other words like that is puro slang, words made up spanglish style or words that have ends added to be able to rhyme to other words in a song. tu sabes? but nways, i love reggueton thats my music, its straight street, thats what i like!!!
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laura () - април 26 2005
hey yall i need help learning reaggeaton, english music dancing lessons so if yall know a place email me but gotta be in houston and free thanxs yall
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will () - май 13 2005
Im from london and have spent the 7 months in central and south america. i`m deep into bashment and grime and have just dicovered raggaeton in places like Honduras, Colombia and Guatamala where they are crazy for it. I want to bring some of this good stuff back to london. Does anyone know where i can get hold of raggaeton on vinyl as it only seems to be cd in central/south america.
cheers
Will
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josh () - юли 21 2005
hey que pasa?
well i think reggeaton is the shit rite now and will keep on going forever. well i just want to know what they say in some songs, like the words. i hope anyone can help me know what they mean or stand for.
is sanduguiar- bailar?
perreando?-
corroteando?-
motivando a la yal?-
vailotiar? -
there is other one i want to know i just cant remember ahorita. if anyone knows what they mean, email me or somethin, ya tu sabes?
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teknad - юли 25 2005
Reggaeton is mainstream where I live. Here, Canary islands, is a kind of musical test tube, so reggaeton and bachata masters put their songs on TV every night and day (public tv, i mean) and then if it becomes a success they export it to Spain and other places. But the Reggaeton i see in tv is kind of absurd because it only speaks about violence and power, and it also sounds in every car, music shop (they have even created a new disccase called 'perreo') and many musical events (latin music festivals) and celebrations (carnaval). Local groups are starting to use the Reggaeton template with awful lyrics. If anyone could tell me if any reggaeton artist is talking about political issues, etc, more than 'grab your girl by the hair until she screams 'awww'' i'll be very grateful.....
respect_:
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Shenandoah () - ноември 10 2005
I live in Winchester Va and everyone here listens to Reggaeton I hear the thumpin comin from cars all the time. I'm white but I've listened to it for about 2 years a guy I worked with at taco bell burned me a Cd with Don Omar, Wisin-yandel, Ivy Queen etc. and i really liked it. It really is spreading everywhere I know this cuz even crappy MTV has picked it up with NORE and Nina Sky, Pitbull Daddy Yankee and all them with videos gettin played. I think its good but for real these latin rappers need to do something about reusin the same backbeat over and over in every single reggaeton song I know its a style and all but sometimes I dunno when the songs change.
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Bryanne () - ноември 19 2005
Whass really good? Im from NEW YORK CITY..UPTOWN (WASHINGTON HEIGHTZ) pero im also reppin my home Santo Domingo. Reggaeton is just that type of music that when u jus heaar it it makes u wild out. Or like i kno when im at a party in the club or w.e as soon as me n my homegurls or my homeboys we start singin thrown up the flag. The words r kinda willd but dique its the same shit that rappers in english b sayin so i love it imma keep dancing 2 it. Im outie 1..
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Morenito () - февруари 21 2006
Yo Teknad reggaeton is not all bad listen to Tego Calderon and Vico C they will shed some light and the good Points of the very popular Caribbean Genre of Reggaeton.
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generic tamiflu8878 () (URL) - ноември 2 2006
pmanhwHi guys its me again. Can you look
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