Reggaeton’s ‘Underdog Story’ Told Through Daddy Yankee’s Docuseries

There’s no shortage of great music documentaries out there, but here’s another to add to your queue. Produced by Daddy Yankee, Reggaeton: The Sound that Conquered the World debuted on Peacock on October 3 and is a must-watch for anyone who loves the genre or wants to know more about its global rise. 

The four-part series covers the roots of reggaeton in Puerto Rico and its worldwide takeover in the late 2010s. Faculty member Wayne Marshall, coeditor of Reggaeton, has already shown clips from the series in his class.

“Because the class is about DJ cultures and American social dance, the scenes I screened in class were the ones that discussed the importance of DIY house parties in marquesinas as a common coming-of-age experience as well as how DJ Negro's the Noise nightclub became a crucible for local vocalists vying for audience approval.”

The first episode explains the roots of reggaeton going back to the 1970s. “I appreciate that they situate reggaeton's emergence in local Puerto Rican history, pointing to Afro-Puerto Rican traditions such as bomba and then to the cultural resonance of salsa in the ’70s, hip-hop and house in the ’80s, and finally reggae in the early ’90s—all of which came to PR via NYC,” says Marshall. “While reggaeton's story is complicated and often contested, the series is careful to give attention to the genre's different contexts over the years, from Puerto Rico to New York to Panama to Jamaica and, more recently, Colombia.” 

“Reggaeton” also covers the genre’s meteoric rise and the eventual backlash to its success. 

“Of course, reggaeton is not the first genre to be treated this way—perennial debates in rock and rap come to mind—and the series is interested in presenting reggaeton's history as an underdog story, which it is,” says Marshall. “But I think reggaeton's first major commercial breakthrough, back in the days of ‘Gasolina’ and ‘Oye Mi Canto,' was so remarkable and unprecedented—and industry investment was so heavy, and some might say oversaturated—that people began watching very closely.” 

“When the crossover hits appeared to dry up a few years later, I remember a lot of stories asking whether the genre had run out of gasolina,” he adds. 

Spoiler alert: that wasn’t the end of reggaeton—far from it. “Since the record-breaking chart-run of ‘Despacito’ in 2017 and then the rise of Bad Bunny as the most-streamed artist in the world, this second wave of reggaeton popularity seems to have confirmed that the genre has lots of life left in it.”