Legendaddy & Motomami: Sonic Showdown

Finally! I've been wanting to write about this for a while, but I've struggled with deciding whether or not I had anything worthwhile to say. Then, I realized, when do I ever not talk just to say things? I'm not an expert about any fucking thing, and this is no different. I'm just a serial chitchatter.

I can't help but constantly compare Daddy Yankee's Legendaddy and Rosalía's Motomami when I listen to either of them. Even on a superficial level, they have a lot in common. Both are reggaeton albums that came out in March 2022, and only while I'm writing this did I realize that both titles are parental portmanteaus. Maybe subconsciously I could not help but compare Daddy and Mami, and how one might read either as defining itself in contrast to what the other is not (as one tends to do). Regardless of their titles, thematically, both albums are long-form declarations of each artist's mastery over reggaeton as a musical genre and cultural force. How does each artist characterize their own mastery, and to what extent do their particular visions for reggaeton clash?

Legendaddy is Daddy Yankee’s eighth and final studio album. Being the Father of Reggaeton, you might guess that it was composed with the goal of celebrating his long career and cementing his legacy as the GOAT of the genre (see cover). If so, you’d be right! The album is a time capsule of two decades of reggaeton evolution, each step along the way proclaiming Daddy Yankee as the progenitor and perfector of the genre. There's songs that lean more modern with EDM production and dembow or trap beats, and others which fuse reggaeton with traditional Latin genres like salsa, bachata, and cumbia. A good chunk of the album features (relatively) next-gen artists like Bad Bunny, Natti Natasha, Becky G, Sech, and El Alfa, next to (relatively) legendary artists like Pitbull, Lil Jon (crunk but close enough), and Daddy Yankee himself. Overall, you can read the album as an attempted completion of reggaeton as a 'project' by which Daddy Yankee passes the torch to his successors while ensuring his legacy as their progenitor—or, perhaps... as their Legendaddy.

It succeeds pretty well! If you wanted to introduce someone to reggaeton, like this is what it sounds like and all you can do with it, this album is a perfect crash course in addition to being a perfect soundtrack for ass-shaking. It's not just because of Daddy Yankee as a rapper and producer unto himself, but because of how well he mixes with other artists and genres. There's something really neat about "X Última Vez" sounding as if Daddy Yankee had a feature on Bad Bunny's Un Verano Sin Ti, rather than Bad Bunny having a feature on Legendaddy. The same is true for "Hot" with Pitbull, which is actually a 2012-era Pitbull song that happens to feature and be produced by Daddy Yankee. Maybe there's little sonic consistency throughout the album except for the omnipresent dembow beat (except for the cheating bastard Rauw Alejandro's song "Agua", with more of his typical unce-unce thing). However, the album's thematic consistency more than makes up for any seeming musical discrepancy.

What's interesting is that you can say much of the same about Rosalía's Motomami, her third studio album and the first to (seemingly) break out of Spain into Latin America and the rest of the world. I sometimes say that Rosalía's vibe is like she was grown in a lab to sing, since her background is nationally Spaniard (European) and musically academic. Her previous El Mal Querer, an experimental flamenco pop album, was literally her final project for her bachelor's degree in flamenco! There's no denying Rosalía's skill or talent, which she has studiously and successfully perfected, but maybe you see where I'm going with this. Motomami is not Rosalía's first foray into reggaeton, since she had featured on the (incredible!) song "Relación" in 2020 alongside Sech, Daddy Yankee, Farruko, and J Balvin. Motomami, however, is Rosalía's first reggaeton work as an auteur. It's experimental as El Mal Querer and as generically wide-reaching as Legendaddy, which is a fantastic feat through and through, but it comes across like a European artist trying to 'elevate' music otherwise seen as ghetto, like it needed to be elevated in order to be considered music worthy of art.

This is apparent in the genre experimentation and even lyrically, where Rosalía in two songs directly references the classic reggaeton song "Saoco" by Wisin and Daddy Yankee: once in "Saoko" to show off how she's transforming the genre, and again as a response song "Bizcochito" retorting Wisin's pet name ("I'm not, nor will I ever be, your little cookie!"). Both are bangers! At the same time, they feel kind of strange. Many song titles refer to Japanese cultural symbols, and "Saoko" replaces the "c" in "Saoco" with a "k". This gives the impression that Rosalía is exoticizing, even 'orientalizing', reggaeton—to what aim, exactly, when she is already depicting herself as an outsider above? It's important to me that I emphasize how much I love this album. My favorite song from the album, "La Fama", features The Weeknd's gorgeous voice and sees Rosalía chop her own gorgeous voice into a bachata guitar. It's a really cool approach to bachata and a pleasure to listen to, but in light of the overall project it (to some extent) rubs me the wrong way. There's one Latin American artist featured on the album, dembow rapper Tikischa, and otherwise it's just Rosalía 'transforming' Latin American music.

However, there's a but—and being Latina, it's a big but: doesn't reggaeton have a women problem? I'm young, but I don't think there were any popular female reggaeton artists until around the same time female rappers also went mainstream in the United States—over here we got Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B and Doja Cat, over there we got Karol G and Natti Natasha and Becky G (if I had a quarter for every female reggaeton artist with a last initial G...). The latter predate Rosalía by half a decade at most, so they're all basically of the same cohort. The exclusion of women and predominance of men in reggaeton wasn't arbitrary: the genre typically expresses a male-chauvinistic perspective on sex which objectifies women. The music is fun and the beats are shake-worthy and I think we all enjoy a little self-objectification, but when you read the genre critically it's obviously pretty phallocentric. In that context, Rosalía's girlboss energy is a necessary injection into the genre, but it's unfortunate that it's wrapped up with its own European cultural chauvinism.

This reflects back on Daddy Yankee in particular. At his final concert promoting the album, besides officially announcing his retirement from music—put a pin in it—he came out as a Christian and re-dedicated his life to proselytizing his faith. This is strangely not unusual with reggaeton artists, with Farruko doing basically the same thing in 2022, and maybe this recalls the roots of reggaeton in Jamaican dancehall and reggae (a sometimes overtly religious genre). Good for them, but I see this as an extension of the male chauvinism predominant in reggaeton. There's a certain Christian attitude towards sex which sees men as hapless idiots tempted into sexual immorality by promiscuous women. This isn't textually biblical, as per Jesus (Matthew 5:27–30), but it's an easy way for men to acquit themselves of their own sexuality by blaming it on the object of their desire while, simultaneously, affirming their participation in their own fantasy. Maybe I'm making up a guy to be mad at, but I take issue with Farruko and Daddy Yankee acting like they're turning away from reggaeton for its rampant sexuality despite their participation in reggaeton as rampant sexuality. It's not that people can't change, but that they have externalized their own desire and behavior onto reggaeton (and women) as if it wasn't their own.

Maybe this points to greater thematic affinity between Legendaddy and Motomami. Though their respective chauvinisms exist on different dimensions of the social matrix (sex and nation), both are ultimately discourses of mastery which betray the artist's purported respect for the object of their work. They're also both really good albums. Just is what it is. I'm pleased to say, at least, Daddy Yankee's new Christian music won't have you wanting to get down for Jesus.