Calle 13
Move over Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Wisin y Yandel and Arcángel. Now’s the turn for Calle 13 with its new album “Los de atrás vienen conmigo,” which hit stores everywhere today.
After listening to it a few times, I’ll be posting an album review sometime next week. In the meantime, here’re some of the set’s highlights:
• It includes collaborations with Mexican alt-rockers Café Tacvba and Panamanian singer-songwriter and actor Rubén Blades on the songs “No hay nadie como tú” and “La Perla.”
• Its rhythms are as varied as the colors of a geeky shirt – urban, polka, reggaetón, Nigerian Afro-beat, New Orleans jazz and retro electro-pop.
• And here’s how the Puerto Rican duo (Residente and Visitante) describes its sound: “urban music at a crossroads.”
And this is what Jon Pareles of The New York Times has to say about the new effort of René Pérez (Residente) and Eduardo Cabra (Visitante):
“Residente (René Pérez), the rapper in the Puerto Rican duo Calle 13, keeps insisting he’s crazy on the group’s third album, “Los de Atrás Vienen Conmigo”…But he’s crazy like a visionary, seeing trouble and utopia, vulgarity and exaltation, competitive put-downs and universal brotherhood all at once. In his world, he declares in “Bienvenidos a Mi Mundo” (“Welcome to My World”), everything is possible. Calle 13’s music, composed by Residente’s cousin Visitante (Eduardo Cabra), pushes in just as many directions; one song categorizes it as “urban music at a crossroads.” … This time there are more Latin American all-stars: the Mexican rockers Café Tacuba put a polka behind “No Hay Nadie Como Tú” (“Nobody Like You”) while the Panamanian songwriter Rubén Blades sings — and raps with ease — on “La Perla.”But one hemisphere isn’t enough for Calle 13: various songs draw on Balkan brass bands and Nigerian Afro-beat, as well as New Orleans jazz and retro electro-pop. Residente’s rapping shifts meter and tone to ride each one. Variety alone wouldn’t make Calle 13 so remarkable. The omnivorous music, complete with horn-section hooks and women singing pop choruses, underlines the conviction that all potential listeners — well, except for the music-business sellouts mocked in “Que Lloren” (“That They Cry”), naysayers in “Ven y Critícame” (“Come and Criticize Me”) and the “gringa wannabe” in “Gringo Latin Funk” — should unite, both on and beyond the dance floor, as lighthearted rebels. Few hip-hop or urban acts, in any language, match so much ambition to so much fun.”
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