El General was known as a skilled improvisor. El General and his friends got started by taking Jamaican riddims like the genre-defining dembow and rapping in Spanish over them they used to board buses in Panama City and perform for fellow riders.

This proto-reggaeton style emulated Jamaican dancehall much more closely than later styles would. Given the history of West Indian immigration to Panama to build the Canal, it’s not surprising that the story of reggaeton begins there. Years before the term reggaeton was invented, Panamanian rapper El General (Edgardo Franco) was the first artist to gain recognition recording reggae en español. Reggaeton will only continue to evolve and develop read on for 10 songs that represent the sonic and cultural evolution of the genre in the past three decades. Colombian singer Karol G, for example, is currently one of the genre’s biggest stars, and Spanish singer Rosalía pivoted to reggaeton for her 2022 album Motomami, which won a Latin GRAMMY for Album Of The Year.Ĭolombian artists have also been making their way to the top of the reggaeton charts in recent years - alongside Karol G, there’s J Balvin and Maluma - although Puerto Rican artists still dominate the genre, with current stars like Rauw Alejandro and Anuel AA. Reggaeton has long been a male-dominated genre (with Ivy Queen being the main exception to the rule), but in recent years female singers have become more prominent. In Puerto Rico, early reggaeton was called 'underground,' and gained popularity in the mid-1990s through mixtapes put out by DJs like Playero and Negro, who utilized hip-hop techniques to alter the dancehall riddims as an instrumental track for local rappers and singers like Daddy Yankee.

While dominant across Latin America in the new millennium, reggaeton has made huge inroads with English-speaking audiences in the past decade, particularly with crossover hits like 'Bailando,' 'Despacito,' and numerous Bad Bunny songs from the past three years.Īlthough many associate reggaeton with Puerto Rico, the roots of the genre can be found in Panama, with artists like El General and Nando Boom taking Jamaican dancehall riddims - like dembow, first introduced in the Shabba Ranks song of the same name - and rapping in Spanish over them in the early 1990s. Once a marginalized genre associated with lewdness and criminality - much like the genres from which it draws so much influence, dancehall and hip-hop - reggaeton is now firmly in the mainstream.

List of reggae riddims