1. “Gasolina” - Daddy Yankee (2010)

Kajikawa offers the 1979 radio hit,  “Rapper’s Delight” as both Hip-Hop’s first commercial hit and original sin. In it’s mainstream appeal, "Rappers Delight" gave the nascent genre a sonic identity, even if far removed and exported from its socio-cultural production site. "Rappers Delight" was instrumental in the translation of Hip Hop from live performance/ production to a codified disco-aligned musical language. A translation which was itself dissociated from Hip-Hop’s  roots of Djs, MCs, and club parties. 

Daddy Yankee’s 2010 “Gasolina” served a similar function in advancing Reggaeton’s public profile and figuring a sonic identity for export around the world.  A fast, dynamic, innuendo ridden piece, "Gasolina" is “a musical test engaging with a long history of circulating sounds, people, and ideas about self and other, race and place”(19). “Gasolina” was by no means the first big Reggaeton hit, but it was everywhere and is to many the prototypical track in the canon of the genre.

The track begins like the start of a race, high-octane instrumentation building and building at Daddy Yankee’s insistence. After enough action movie suspense, Daddy Yankee tells us to prepare because what comes next will hit “Duro!” Having resolved this building tension, Daddy Yankee turns his attention to the subject of the song, asserting that his “gata” or party-girl lover likes gasolina (gas/oline). A female voice is heard responding to Daddy Yankee’s call with “dame ma’ gasolina”/ give me more gasoline. This call and response continues throughout the duration of the song. Interwoven herein is Daddy Yankee’s complex wordplay and rapid delivery similar to MC contemporaries. Hip Hop is further evoked by way of the ever-present buzzy synthesizer and virtual instrumentation synonymous with popular music softwares familiar to Hip-Hop producers. Furthermore,  “pop and r&b, dancehall reggae, and even techno [can be audibly traced] as they provide a dense harmonic texture for Yankee’s sing-song, rapid-fire rap” (19). 

Strikingly, the song adds Spain to the transnational melange in its use of  “32nd note flourishes,” reminiscent of Pasodoble (doublestep), the music of bullfighting. This connection is made most salient in the lyrics “En la pi’ta no llaman lo’ matadore”/ on the track they call us bullfighters. Conversely, or rather, constructively, Jamaican Dancehall’s Dem Bow “a song and a riddim (i.e., backing track)” forms the sonic underpinning for this racial hybridity to the beat of “boom-ch-boom-chick boom-ch-boom-chick” (20, 21).