Reggaeton: Daddy Yankee - Talento De Barrio

The new Daddy Yankee CD has been lying around for a few weeks now at Casa Chapín. I don't know what caused me to delay this review - was it the ugly cover and the title Talento de Barrio, promising gangsta-style bragging I don't like? Was it the first track, "Talento de Barrio", which is just exactly that - bragging and shouting over a boring hiphop beat? Or was it the fact that this is 'just a soundtrack', released merely a year after El Cartel III?
Talento de Barrio is the OST to the movie of the same title, inspired by the life story of Daddy Yankee. In short: a young Puerto Rican faces a choice between his friends (and an inevitable death in gang wars) or his music (and leaving the ghetto). But it's more than a soundtrack between albums, it's a well thought out project and it quickly becomes clear that DY values this album even higher than El Cartel III, on which he worked 3 full years.

You'd expect the soundtrack to the life story of Raymond Ayala a.k.a. Daddy Yankee to be filled with old school reggaeton beats and cheesy nineties moustaches (like this or this). But if anything, Talento de Barrio is the most modern sounding DY record so far. It seems he finally made the choice between the unexciting and aggressive reggaeton that made him big, and the club-influenced fusion the genre has evolved into.

First single "Pose" is the perfect example of the direction DY is heading in. A beat hardly recognizable as dembow, drowned in clubby synths, made for the dancefloor instead of the barrio. Also see: "Salgo Pa' La Calle" (featuring Randy, who has a lot more experience in ravey-ton) and "Infinito". A lot of latino fusion tracks also mark this evolution into more danceable music - "De La Paz y De La Guerra" is the best track in my opinion, the heavier beat compensated by light-hearted trumpets.

Still, it's Daddy Yankee, people. So don't expect the intelligent prose of Calle 13. Don't expect the modesty of Tego Calderón. And certainly don't expect to hear someone who can sing. Last year I wrote that "he alternatingly sounds like an agressively shouting brat, and a B-list American Idol candidate with a hopeless inclination to singing off-key". That's even more true on Talento de Barrio because he just has to sing more: "Llamado de Emergencia" would have been a great vallenato-reggaeton fusion if it wasn't so horribly off-key, and the delightfully caribbean-sounding "Que Tengo Que Hacer" is only saved by using a vocoder.

Of course there are 4 or 5 obsolete tracks, like on any other latin urban album (the collab with Arcángel is a bit limited, and "Suelta" and "Somos de Calle" remind me too much of Barrio Fino). But overall I can conclude that Talento de Barrio is his best album so far. Opening up to new influences has payed off and delivered some of the catchiest music Daddy Yankee has ever made.

Daddy Yankee - Pose mp3
Daddy Yankee - De La Paz y De La Guerra mp3
Album: Talento de Barrio (El Cartel/Machete)
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