3. Playero 38 “Underground’ (1993)

Playero’s 1993 mixtape, Playero 38 “Underground’ is a perfect example of Underground coming out of PR in the early 90s. Also in the mixtape you’ll hear a baby-faced Daddy Yankee. 

The name “underground” came out of the Hip-Hop community wherein artists would describe themselves and their music as underground to demarcate a difference between themselves and the  “sell-outs” (37). Selling out was seen as creating purposeful commercial rap, devoid of the more overt  politics of earlier attempts to make it in the  “aboveground” scene (38). In the late 80s and early 90s, cassette reproductions of Hip-Hop recordings were circulating in a circular trade between NYC, PR, and  the DR, all in a sort of” informal economy” (38). Integrating the Dancehall “Dem Bow” riddim that had entered PR by way of Jamaica, artists began to experiment.