Why your kids love reggaeton (and you have to explain the lyrics to them)

The only side effect tested after reading "Matar al papito. Por qué no te gusta el reggaeton (ya tus hijos sí)" (Cúpula publishing house) is that you then have to make an effort to make the Spotify and YouTube algorithms understand that you don't necessarily like reggaeton. The fact that the songs you've looked up and listened to briefly are mentioned in the book is part of an attempt to understand a phenomenon that the author, Oriol Rosell (Barcelona, 1972), describes as "bestial."

In response to part of the essay's title, Rosell doesn't mince his words. "In Spain's repudiation of Latin urban music, there's postcolonial resentment," he explains to La Vanguardia . Therefore, we don't like Maluma, Karol G, Daddy Yankee, Myke Towers, or Bad Bunny, because "let Latin Americans do their thing, look, it's not a problem; but let the things they do be more successful than ours, that's a no-no, because we invented them," he says critically.

There may be other reasons for the rejection. The perreo , the lyrics, perhaps certain rhythms... that's what Rosell doesn't like about reggaeton, like many others, especially – as the author states – from Generation X and the early millennials . "But for it to be an object of study, I don't need to like it," he explains. "It's one of those things that are in the air and that challenge me to understand the world," he adds to justify his desire to write Matar al papito . "We can't dismiss this type of music simply because we don't like it."

Matar al papito is both a journey through time through Panama, New York, and Puerto Rico to capture the genesis of reggaeton, and a dissection to assess its significance without prejudice.

There is postcolonial resentment in Spain's rejection of Latin urban music. Oriol Rosell, author of "Matar al papito" (Killing the Daddy). Why you don't like reggaeton (but your kids do).

Why is it a "beastly phenomenon"? Because, in addition to breaking the linguistic barrier of the Spanish language for the first time worldwide, the music scene hasn't suffered such a massive upheaval since the birth of rock and roll. For example: Bad Bunny, the greatest exponent of this musical style, has thirty concerts in San Juan, Puerto Rico, every weekend from July 11 to September 14. Sold out. In Spain, he'll perform twelve shows next year—two in Barcelona and ten in Madrid—and is also on track to sell out the box office.

As has already been pointed out, there is also a generational component to the rejection of reggaeton. Rosell explains that today's teenagers "live in circumstances of high immigration density" that their parents hadn't experienced at their age. "For children, Latin American culture isn't exotic at all," he asserts, which is why they already live surrounded, to a certain extent, by an environment that we might incorrectly call Latinizing .

Some families share the same opinion. Marta Calvo, mother of 13-year-old Olívia, emphasizes that one cannot close the door on things and that "reggaeton has transcended the musical sphere, because everything involving this style and everything Latin is fashionable, like clothing." "And also this attitude of 'I enjoy myself and the rest doesn't matter to me,'" she adds.

Olívia admits that she likes reggaeton “quite a bit,” but welcomes her parents’ “warnings,” especially regarding the lyrics. The sexualization of the lyrics is another point. Folc Lecha, father of Bru and Abril, recalls a time when, while driving with his two children, Lala by Myke Towers was playing. “I paused the song phrase by phrase and asked them if they understood it, and if they didn’t, I told them straight away that it was basically a song about oral sex,” he explains.

There's more awareness than prohibition in these two examples. The same applies to Rosa and her son Marcel. "I love the rhythm, but I'm aware that some of the lyrics aren't for me, and they're the ones that alert me," says Marcel, a fan of Ozuna, JC Reyes, and Quevedo.

Are reggaeton songs more sexualized than any other style? “No,” Rosell replies, “it's just that we understand them because they're in Spanish.” For the author, all popular music—understood not as folkloric, but as global—“has always been defined by heteropatriarchal and sexist structures.” But there's an intrinsic fact about reggaeton. Rosell uses the comparison: “If you make death metal, you won't start singing about horticulture, you'll start singing about massacring, mutilating, and destroying, because that's part of the style; if you make pop music, you'll make love songs. And in the case of Latin urban music, the discourse it uses is already embedded from the beginning.”

Reggaeton has displaced rock music among young people. Rock is doomed, because the genre offers nothing new. This is Rosell's opinion, arguing that it hasn't evolved in the last 25 years because, among other reasons, young people aren't drawn to rock's sentimental nostalgia.

Young people are looking for something else. They're looking for entertainment that doesn't require rock lyrics, he reasons. "We live in an eminently pornographic time. Everything is transparent. There can be no secrets or shadows, no poetry or metaphor," Rosell says, to help understand why teenagers are now turning to reggaeton.

Still, one might think that reggaeton is a revolutionary phenomenon, like rock music. This isn't the case. "There is no revolt, but rather a surrender," the author asserts. Precisely because they don't hide from things. Reggaeton singers are, according to Rosell, "hypercapitalists," because they've understood that the only possible triumph in a world where everything is a commodity is economic success. And they show it shamelessly, in videos filled with wads of cash. In this scenario, the author concludes, rock 'n' rollers don't fit in: there's no longer any room for nostalgia or poetry.