El General - Te Ves Buena
Just as Bush senior was commanding the deposition of Pineapple Face-Noriega, Edgardo Armando Franco, better known as El General, was taking his first (dance) steps in Panama.
The decorated Panamanian, who had nothing to do with Noriega and had studied management in the USA, began in the early '90s to experiment with his personal fusion of Spanish reggae, dancehall, and hip hop.
Something for which there was still no name, since hardly anyone was talking about reggaeton yet. And certainly not far from San Juan.
But the General arrives on his own, seemingly without predecessors and without ties to the Puerto Rican scene. Except, of course, for those Spanish reggae singers who had been crossing through the isthmus since the '70s.
The rhythm is what we all know by now, but imagine how something like this might have sounded (between '90 and '91 or so). Three minutes of pure tunz-ta-tunz to sing to a "mami" shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle.
Cola included (for the cocaine, one only had to look around).
Overwhelming success and a cascade of platinum records, until his sudden and irreversible retirement to become a Jehovah's Witness.
From which comes the saying, famous in Panama: "if a Jehovah's Witness knocks at your door, be careful, because it could be the inventor of reggaeton."
But don’t tell Puerto Rico.
Just as Bush senior was commanding the deposition of Pineapple Face-Noriega, Edgardo Armando Franco, better known as El General, was taking his first (dance) steps in Panama.
The decorated Panamanian, who had nothing to do with Noriega and had studied management in the USA, began in the early '90s to experiment with his personal fusion of Spanish reggae, dancehall, and hip hop.
Something for which there was still no name, since hardly anyone was talking about reggaeton yet. And certainly not far from San Juan.
But the General arrives on his own, seemingly without predecessors and without ties to the Puerto Rican scene. Except, of course, for those Spanish reggae singers who had been crossing through the isthmus since the '70s.
The rhythm is what we all know by now, but imagine how something like this might have sounded (between '90 and '91 or so). Three minutes of pure tunz-ta-tunz to sing to a "mami" shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle.
Cola included (for the cocaine, one only had to look around).
Overwhelming success and a cascade of platinum records, until his sudden and irreversible retirement to become a Jehovah's Witness.
From which comes the saying, famous in Panama: "if a Jehovah's Witness knocks at your door, be careful, because it could be the inventor of reggaeton."
But don’t tell Puerto Rico.
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