Countdown to Christmas Eve

R is for: Reggaeton

What is reggaeton? Allow me, you whitebread sucka:

1) Dancehall reggae/Latin hip hop from Panama/Puerto Rico.

2) You've heard it before, whether you know it or not.

3) Specifically, the same club beat used over and over to make a very similar song (a 4/4 kick and, counting 8th notes, snare on the "and" of 3 and the downbeat of 4. And it's always 95 bpm. Or "boom-ch-boom-chick").

A fourth point: Every album cover has a naked Puerto Rican woman on the front. No kidding. Little Puerto Rican kids with awesome mullets are fans too.

Man, It's fascinating that this music has risen to the popularity that it has given the fact that it is subject to such strict limitations. All music has rhythmic characteristics that define it as some genre (country shuffles, the reggae one-drop, club rap beats, odd-time prog...) but the exact same beats per minute? The exact same rhythmic pattern with different words? Fascinating. I'm pretty white and nerdy. As Jim Gaffigan would say, beyond the pale.

In the same sense, I could never explain to a reggaetonian the joys of George Jones' She Thinks I Still Care or The Dillinger Escape Plan's Sunshine The Werewolf for that matter, but isn't that what makes the world go round? Different strokes...

(See Lewis Grizzard's 1983 book, Elvis Is Dead And I Don't Feel So Good Myself).

Knowing you, there's a clubgoer in your life who proudly blasts reggaeton out of the window of their car while next to me at the stoplight. So get 'em some, you honky.

More examples, cracker. WARNING! Scantily clad ladies ahead:

We've come a long way since Gerardo's Rico Suave.