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The music offers a set of sounds and symbols so broadly appealing that it appears to be fueling the broadest pan-Latino youth movement to date, unprecedented in its reach and appeal. But perhaps even more significant is reggaeton’s massive grassroots following. So it’s little surprise that the top reggaeton releases now sell in the hundreds of thousands, reggaeton performers sell out major venues across the country, and formerly ecumenical pan-Latin radio stations have been adopting the new, reggaeton-centric «Hurban» (Hispanic-Urban) format. One effect of these seismic socio-cultural shifts is that a number of US cities, especially along the coasts, have become veritable centers of the pan-Latino community, and the soundscapes of New York, Miami, Boston, and other sites of migration reflect this growing presence with their cosmopolitan musical hybrids, of which reggaeton represents the latest and greatest. Latino migration is also increasingly circular, especially for Puerto Ricans who, as US citizens, can travel within the States relatively unfettered. You’ve heard it before: one in eight people in the US speaks Spanish, with much higher rates in cities, while «Hispanics» – although something of a constructed category, perhaps more useful to politicians, and far from monolithic – have surpassed African-Americans as the nation’s largest ethnic group, with census-based projections predicting 20% of the country’s population will be of Hispanic-origin by 2020. Reggaeton’s self-sustaining relationship to a sizeable core audience draws our attention to the most obvious underlying reason for the genre’s seemingly sudden ubiquity: simple demographics. On the main, it still is, though many artists and producers now aspire to the platinum plaques that million-sellers such as Daddy Yankee and Luny Tunes have proven are within reach. At least until recently, reggaeton has been music produced by and for the pan-Latino community. Reggaeton lacks much of an exotic veneer precisely because the music has not been marketed to Anglo-American audiences.
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Reggaeton artists and producers have not simply piggybacked on the success of their hip-hop brethren, they have exploited and expanded hip-hop’s hustle-hustle business model, especially in such areas as shameless self-promotion, savvy cross-branding, street-team marketing, and grassroots distribution. In contrast to the exotic cast that has consistently marked Latin music packaged for non-Latin audiences, reggaeton enjoys a sonic profile that, for all its syncopation and sway, is heard as something more familiar, more modern, more American (in the US-centric sense). Indeed, reggaeton’s inroads into hip-hop’s media channels may prove crucial in the genre’s ability to transcend, all hype aside, the «craze» status that has marked previous spikes of interest in Latin music.
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Just a few years ago the Spanish one heard on non-Latin, commercial radio was limited to «Feliz Navidad» and «La Vida Loca» now one hears 15 to 30 minute blocks of Spanish-language pop on the same stations that promise nothing but «blazin’ hip-hop and R&B». Reggaeton has already accomplished something that other Latin musical forms – son, mambo, salsa, merengue, bachacta – never quite attained: not only has the music ignited the imaginations of young Latinos and Latinas, but it’s found unprecedented favour in mainstream US culture. That beat you’ve been hearing – the steady boom-ch-boom-chick rattling the trunks of passing cars and moving masses in the club – isn’t just another fleeting hip-hop trend.