Speaker 1: Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones, hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversialist.
Speaker 2: I'm Britney Spanos and.
Speaker 3: I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the
Speaker 3: greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great.
Speaker 3: And this week we're going into Gasolina by Daddy Yankee.
Speaker 1: Yes, the song is at number fifty on our list,
Speaker 1: rounding off the top fifty. I mean, like, is there
Speaker 1: a bigger kind of like cultural moment than this song droppet.
Speaker 2: I feel like.
Speaker 1: It's still one of those massive, massive songs that it's
Speaker 1: just like so high energy and kind of is such
Speaker 1: an adrenaline rush of a pop song.
Speaker 3: It's never not an excitement when it comes out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean it is a barrier breaking song too.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was a song that really helped Catapault
Speaker 1: reggaetone into popular consciousness. I mean, and even was ahead
Speaker 1: of its curve in a lot of ways. Like not
Speaker 1: only did it kind of help break through, but then
Speaker 1: it still took so many years for that kind of
Speaker 1: foundation work that Daddy Yankee made with this song with
Speaker 1: his career to reach its full potential.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but talk about a song with an impact on
Speaker 3: the feature. It's really wild to look back over the
Speaker 3: last twenty years in pop music and think of the
Speaker 3: world that this song dropped into and how different it was. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and a definite before and after a moment. Yeah, in
Speaker 3: the history of pop music, there was a thing where
Speaker 3: there was nothing like this before, Nothing had had this
Speaker 3: kind of impact before. Yeah, and it was just innovative
Speaker 3: on every level.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw on that if it were released literally this week,
Speaker 1: it would hit number one and immediately, you know, like
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of surreal, how still fresh, it sounds
Speaker 1: still how like, like you said, ahead of its time,
Speaker 1: how influential. I mean, there's not a single I get
Speaker 1: to an artist who is not cited Daddy Yankee this
Speaker 1: song or Barrio Fino his album that the song was
Speaker 1: on without you know, it's like completely foundational. There's no like,
Speaker 1: not a single artist that's you know, the most streamed
Speaker 1: artist right now of course, like Bad Bunny, Carol Ozuna,
Speaker 1: like none of them would not cite the.
Speaker 3: Song absolutely and that it had the impact it had.
Speaker 3: It's almost hard to imagine the last twenty years without it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the song came out in two thousand and
Speaker 1: four on Barrio Fino, which was Daddy Yankee's third album.
Speaker 1: And I mean this was a massive breakthrough of an album.
Speaker 1: He had already been a big artist in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: but had not yet broken worldwide. And I mean there
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of artists, Spanish language artists, let alone
Speaker 1: artists doing reggaetone that were breaking out at all at
Speaker 1: this time. But you know, this was a song that
Speaker 1: ended up kind of shattering that ceiling and becoming the
Speaker 1: biggest song in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, reggaeton is very much a Puerto Rico thing
Speaker 3: at that time. It's not really spreading out the way
Speaker 3: it would internationally with this song. Yeah, And it's a
Speaker 3: wild to think that this song was a sound that
Speaker 3: just so many people around the world were hearing for
Speaker 3: the first time and it blew everyone away.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean this was also like such a time in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands where I feel like Latin pop
Speaker 1: was something that was like both becoming very very popular
Speaker 1: but also appropriated a lot by a lot of artists.
Speaker 1: Like this was a really big time kind of posts.
Speaker 1: Ricky Martin and Rickquae Glcia is starting to break through, you know,
Speaker 1: Shakira of course kind of crossing over and making her
Speaker 1: first English language album was around this time. This was
Speaker 1: a time where that kind of was becoming a bigger
Speaker 1: part of pop music. I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, English speaking pop artists were kind of touching
Speaker 1: on a lot of like Latin fusion Latin pop influences
Speaker 1: in their songs. You know, you could hear it on like,
Speaker 1: you know, like a n Sync er Brittany album. So
Speaker 1: there was sort of this like air of pooling influence
Speaker 1: from Latin America at this time, even before, of course,
Speaker 1: seeing someone like Daddy Yankee, who is rapping in Spanish
Speaker 1: kind of singing a genre that was already very controversial
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico because it was coming from you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of poor communities. It was sort of this
Speaker 1: you know, kind of looked down upon genre at the time.
Speaker 1: But there was kind of this this thing was happening
Speaker 1: in the air and pop music in that moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like you said, it was spreading all over
Speaker 3: in the US in terms of influence, but there was
Speaker 3: still this wall that it was unthinkable that any Latin artists,
Speaker 3: any Spanish speaking artist could have a hit song in
Speaker 3: the US without doing that compromise, without doing that English
Speaker 3: language song. It's really amazing that that was a template
Speaker 3: for success that was just considered inevitable. That's just how
Speaker 3: it was. And Shakira was already super famous when she
Speaker 3: had her first US hit. She did a song in English,
Speaker 3: That's how it was done. Ricky Martin was a star
Speaker 3: in Puerto Rico four years before he had American impact.
Speaker 3: He did a song in English. And these were great
Speaker 3: songs that they did. But this was a compromise that
Speaker 3: wasn't seen as controversial. It's what you had to do
Speaker 3: to translate that to an American hit, And it was
Speaker 3: just really amazing that a song this uncompromising also had
Speaker 3: that huge international impact it did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean even thinking of someone like Selena in
Speaker 1: the in the nineties who spoke English as her first
Speaker 1: language and was able to have much more success and
Speaker 1: break through as a tehana artist and who was singing
Speaker 1: in Spanish and then suddenly had to kind of go
Speaker 1: back into an English language song to kind of see
Speaker 1: that really go to fruition. But yeah, it was such
Speaker 1: a common thing, expected thing, and such like a requirement
Speaker 1: in the industry. To be seen as viable in specifically
Speaker 1: an American audience, to you know, sing a song, rap
Speaker 1: a song in English and to kind of have that
Speaker 1: even if you were one of the biggest artists in
Speaker 1: on you know, any Spanish language country and having number
Speaker 1: ones in ten, fifteen, twenty other countries, and it still
Speaker 1: mattered so much to kind of get radio play, to
Speaker 1: be seen as an artist that's worthy of getting the
Speaker 1: MTV rotation or anything else, to kind of have that crossover.
Speaker 1: But of course Daddy Yankey proved that was not necessary,
Speaker 1: that didn't matter. And of course, you know, Gosolina of
Speaker 1: course has that really really great propulsive beat.
Speaker 2: It is like so so energy.
Speaker 1: It's like it really feels like you're in like a
Speaker 1: car going like two hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's.
Speaker 1: Also just no matter if you don't speak Spanish, you
Speaker 1: could very much sing along to that chorus like you
Speaker 1: get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it did not need that translation. The old
Speaker 3: school idea of this song started to be a hit,
Speaker 3: Oh should do an English language version of it, you know,
Speaker 3: that was the ninety nine Lift Balloons became ninety nine
Speaker 3: Red Balloons. That's just how it was done. Major Tom
Speaker 3: was starting to be a hit in German, so he
Speaker 3: did it in English, Peter shilling for Gasolina. There was
Speaker 3: no question of that. But it was so axiomatic before
Speaker 3: Gasolina that no matter how huge you were all over
Speaker 3: the world in Spanish, it just did not matter in
Speaker 3: the US without that English language song, that that was
Speaker 3: just an insurmountable barrier. And for this song to just
Speaker 3: smash through, like the barrier wasn't even there. It's the
Speaker 3: confidence in this song, the arrogance that Daddy Yankee sounds
Speaker 3: like he's absolutely on top world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love reading interviews that he's done in
Speaker 1: the year since the song Glowing Up and especially looking
Speaker 1: back on it, and just the fact that, you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of calls out the fact that there was
Speaker 1: so much of this idea of like this must mean
Speaker 1: something really like inappropriate, that like Gasolina must be like
Speaker 1: must be like slang for like alcohol or for sex
Speaker 1: or for something, or for drugs or whatever.
Speaker 2: And he had a really great quote in.
Speaker 1: Interview where he was like, this is probably the most
Speaker 1: innocent song I think I've ever written. He was like,
Speaker 1: in my entire career, this is He was like, there's
Speaker 1: nothing more straightforward than like this song, it's like the
Speaker 1: most innocent lyrics I've ever penned. Of course, reggaetone is
Speaker 1: a very like hypersexual genre. It's like very kind of
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot going on in a lot
Speaker 1: of reggaetone songs. But he was like, this song is
Speaker 1: it's literally about cars and about kind of the idea
Speaker 1: of a girl liking, you know, someone with a really fast,
Speaker 1: expensive car. You know, it's just it's just like so
Speaker 1: funny that he's just like there was so much of
Speaker 1: this kind of like what's it about?
Speaker 2: What's it really about? And he's like, it's it's about gasoline.
Speaker 3: It's about gas there's no double on tundra. It's the
Speaker 3: eternal mystic collusion of car and girl. Yeah, you know
Speaker 3: a car song that's a girl's song. That combination is
Speaker 3: just it's undeniable all through ages, every genre, every language,
Speaker 3: every language. And Gasolina just so urgent, like you said,
Speaker 3: perfect word propulsive for how it sounds, and that it
Speaker 3: didn't need to cross over. It just it was on
Speaker 3: its own terms and everybody heard it said yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you of being at a seventh grade
Speaker 1: dance when the song came on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, incredible because.
Speaker 1: No one knew our teachers were going to translate it.
Speaker 2: I had no idea, didn't matter.
Speaker 3: Catholic school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not cars, you know it's.
Speaker 3: About cars, yes, but for some reason, against all the
Speaker 3: conventional wisdom that Americans needed that English language content. It
Speaker 3: was also pretty easy to tell that this was a
Speaker 3: song about gasoline and just such a powerful sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course you know, this song kind of again
Speaker 1: like breaking that barrier, allowing this idea that like to
Speaker 1: be marketable in the US in America no longer meant
Speaker 1: that you needed to speak in English, or have a
Speaker 1: song in English, or be able to have a hit
Speaker 1: with that. I mean, Broke Berry's on a lot of levels.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked about this, and you know, of course,
Speaker 1: like the BTS episode and things like that, there's all
Speaker 1: these like barriers that ended up sort of being shattered
Speaker 1: over the last two decades in pop music, and especially
Speaker 1: with the rise of social media and streaming like that,
Speaker 1: where this idea that to have a hit it is
Speaker 1: universal no matter what language it is.
Speaker 2: If the song's good, it's good, and it.
Speaker 1: No longer matters this idea that you have to kind
Speaker 1: of forsake your native tongue in order to be a
Speaker 1: success story.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, he proved that this was possible, and so many
Speaker 3: people have done so much with it since then. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: BTS a great comparison. It would have been ridiculous to
Speaker 3: think of them doing a hit song in English to
Speaker 3: make themselves popular in the US. They became stadium act
Speaker 3: in the US by doing exactly what they did and
Speaker 3: what they wanted to on their own terms, in their
Speaker 3: own language. And it was only then that they started
Speaker 3: playing with like doing songs in English with Halsey. Yeah,
Speaker 3: for Gosolina, it's well that reggaeton was such an unusual
Speaker 3: and unprecedented sound. It was such a fusion of different
Speaker 3: things that sounded so extreme, and it was still a
Speaker 3: relatively new genre and as you said, very still a
Speaker 3: very controversial genre in Puerto Rico. It's well because reggaeton
Speaker 3: seemed to get very big. It was something you heard
Speaker 3: all the time in New York, even if you didn't
Speaker 3: know what it was. You know, like there were songs
Speaker 3: that would break out and people would know the names,
Speaker 3: they would know the artists because of those songs. But
Speaker 3: it was still seen as a genre that was rising
Speaker 3: and didn't have a breakout start, didn't have a breakout song.
Speaker 3: There were some examples besides Gosolp, but like nothing was
Speaker 3: as big as Gasolina.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, of course, even just like the sound
Speaker 1: of the genre, this particular song, whereas reggaeton comes from
Speaker 1: reggae music, it comes from you know, this fusion of
Speaker 1: kind of nineties two thousands rap music, and as that
Speaker 1: was sort of evolving very quickly, it was very much
Speaker 1: becoming like very fused with with what the sound of
Speaker 1: reggaetone was, and of course very traditional sort of Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican and Latin Latin pop and traditional sounds that were
Speaker 1: kind of all coming together to create this like very
Speaker 1: high energy, very club forward music that was so much
Speaker 1: blowing up in clubs in the underground, like in sort
Speaker 1: of you know, again hearing it at block parties in
Speaker 1: New York or in the streets of New York well
Speaker 1: before Gosolena blew up, or I mean kind of the
Speaker 1: way with any sort of reggaetone artist that's blown up
Speaker 1: in the last twenty years, you know, you kind of
Speaker 1: hear it sort of people play now of their cars,
Speaker 1: people playing at the clubs, people playing at parties, as
Speaker 1: it sort of kind of builds up hearing like someone
Speaker 1: like Bad Bunny for so long, just like from attending
Speaker 1: block parties, even before he kind of has become one
Speaker 1: of the most streamed artists in the world. It's such
Speaker 1: a testament to why this music is still so successful
Speaker 1: and continues to evolve and change. You know what reggaeton
Speaker 1: sounds like now, completely different than when it sounded twenty
Speaker 1: three years.
Speaker 3: Ago, totally. Rakata was the first reggaeton hit that was
Speaker 3: huge in New York that everybody knew just from coming
Speaker 3: out of cars. Even if people weren't hearing that song
Speaker 3: in clubs or bars, it was still a song that
Speaker 3: you knew just from hearing it in cars, block parties,
Speaker 3: as he said, literally just tearing it on the streets
Speaker 3: with people listening to Rakatau. It was like it was
Speaker 3: a hit song of his entire summer of Rakata in
Speaker 3: New York. Yeah, for Gasolina to take that to a
Speaker 3: national level was really surprising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with this song with day Yankee's career, I mean,
Speaker 1: this was it wasn't even the beginning of his career.
Speaker 1: It was, of course, like he had been sort of
Speaker 1: already blowing up, but it was sort of this like
Speaker 1: this kind of new beginning of world domination and just
Speaker 1: like really a new start for him, as like becoming
Speaker 1: one of the most iconic, best selling artists of all time.
Speaker 1: You know, he famously last year, I guess two years ago,
Speaker 1: he technically announced his retirement, as all great artists do,
Speaker 1: all great artists prematurely announced retirement that may not actually
Speaker 1: be a retirement, but you know, even just like the
Speaker 1: response to that from the community of artists, especially younger
Speaker 1: artists who have become more popular in recent years, who
Speaker 1: idolize him and to have worked with him, you know,
Speaker 1: that response, and also from his fans. I mean, he
Speaker 1: kind of closed out his big tour last year with
Speaker 1: a huge concert in San Juan that I know a
Speaker 1: few friends of mine ended up attending and said it
Speaker 1: was one of the best shows I've ever seen in
Speaker 1: their entire lives. But you know, it's I mean incredible
Speaker 1: that so many years later there's still so many hits,
Speaker 1: great albums, and you know, just like a really great
Speaker 1: kind of legacy that he's built and continued to build.
Speaker 3: Amazing, especially, like you said, for an artist who retired
Speaker 3: definitely from the share school of retirement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure we'll have another tour Nottin, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: sure we will.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially he's like still very young. You know,
Speaker 1: it's still he's like very very young when he started out.
Speaker 1: He's a teacher when he started recording, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's still is still a very very young man. And
Speaker 1: so it's like kind of surreal. But I mean, the
Speaker 1: fact that he could do that after nearly thirty years
Speaker 1: of creatingmusic and tory music and continue to be kind
Speaker 1: of on the pulse of everything that's happening again, as
Speaker 1: reggaeton has changed and evolved over the years to sort
Speaker 1: of not only match but be.
Speaker 2: Very much ahead of the times at all times.
Speaker 1: It's pretty remarkable that he's been able to keep up
Speaker 1: with that and still kind of be ahead of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's never become a legacy act. Yeah, it's amazing
Speaker 3: that he's still had such massive hits in recent years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's funny that he's had this self sustaining career
Speaker 3: long past. I mean, there was no role model for
Speaker 3: you know, a twenty five year career in reggaeton. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the genre is so new and he just really has
Speaker 3: been breaking molds, yeah, and is.
Speaker 1: Now that role model for so many artists who are
Speaker 1: so you know, very vocally following in his footsteps and
Speaker 1: very much kind of looking to him as that lighthouse
Speaker 1: for how they kind of proceed in their own careers.
Speaker 1: You know, the way that the reggaeton being so infused
Speaker 1: with trap music now and kind of edm and house
Speaker 1: house music, kind of hearing all of that sort of
Speaker 1: collide at once in it, it's pretty remarkable to kind
Speaker 1: of see.
Speaker 2: How he's inspired that.
Speaker 1: But also, yeah, like seeing those younger artists who are
Speaker 1: kind of reinventing that wheel in his in his name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as this last album was called Legend Daddy, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really an appropriate, appropriate title.
Speaker 2: For Daddy Yankee.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Next up, we are joined by Rolling Stone Senior music
Speaker 1: editor Julisa Lopez. We are joined now by Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: Senior music editor Julisa Lopez Jalsa.
Speaker 5: Thank you for being right, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: I'm excited to be here. I'm very excited to talk
Speaker 5: about guys.
Speaker 1: Let me know, Yeah, do you remember the first time
Speaker 1: you heard this song or Daddy Yankee?
Speaker 4: Yes, so different so one thing that I was always
Speaker 4: really excited about was my older brother and my older sister.
Speaker 4: My half siblings were raised in Puerto Rico, so kind
Speaker 4: of one brigaton was really starting to take off in
Speaker 4: the nineties, and like early two thousands, I felt like
Speaker 4: I was ahead of everybody because they were bringing back
Speaker 4: all of these tapes from Puerto Rico before it had
Speaker 4: really touched down in the US. There's this guy DJ
Speaker 4: Prao who was one of the pioneers of of Regetong,
Speaker 4: who was playing a lot of the stuff at clubs,
Speaker 4: and then like would release these bootlegses and so a
Speaker 4: very young Daddy Yankee is featured on a lot of
Speaker 4: those mixtapes. So I first heard Daddy Yankee on those
Speaker 4: and then I remember like in middle school and stuff
Speaker 4: like I would bring them into my middle school and
Speaker 4: felt cooler than everybody because this like entire genre of
Speaker 4: music was happening and nobody, you know, in the in
Speaker 4: the US really had it.
Speaker 5: And then I would say it started picking up more
Speaker 5: and more and more.
Speaker 4: I think the album came out in two thousand and four,
Speaker 4: so the song broke through in two thousand and five.
Speaker 5: I was in high school by then. So by then
Speaker 5: I was like Daddy Yankees, like old News been around forever.
Speaker 4: But that I mean, that song was just massive, and
Speaker 4: I think really the sort of the breakthrough point four Regatong,
Speaker 4: which I think really hadn't found its footing yet in
Speaker 4: sort of a global mainstream stage, but this was, you know,
Speaker 4: the point where where it didn't weren't really broke through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you entuck realized a little bit, especially because
Speaker 1: he was so much blowing up prior to this song
Speaker 1: and getting such like a already kind of seen as
Speaker 1: this like king of Reggaeton, Like what was happening prior
Speaker 1: to Gasolina for him?
Speaker 2: Like how yeah, how is his career developing?
Speaker 5: So Danny ge Get started really young.
Speaker 4: I think he was about sixteen when he started rapping
Speaker 4: in Puerto Rico and back then, if I mean, if
Speaker 4: you really think about the way that Raggetong came together,
Speaker 4: you know, in the early nineties, there wasn't even really
Speaker 4: a name for it. You know, if you think about
Speaker 4: how Regyaetung happened, it is sort of this incredible mix
Speaker 4: of geography and history and if you really really go back,
Speaker 4: I mean a lot of this starts with the Panama Canal.
Speaker 4: Like all of these West Indian migrants came to Panama,
Speaker 4: they brought reggae albums with them and all of their culture.
Speaker 4: And then in the seventies you start seeing reggae espagnon,
Speaker 4: which you know is artists like in Heineral and sham
Speaker 4: Barinks and people who are like really sort of the
Speaker 4: pioneer and like the prototype for what you know reggae
Speaker 4: and spagnon eventually becomes you know, reggaetong.
Speaker 5: And so what you had happening is that you had these.
Speaker 4: Influence says from the Caribbean, from the West Indies, and
Speaker 4: then in Puerto Rico, it you know, mixes in with
Speaker 4: hip hop, which like hip hop was coming in from
Speaker 4: New York from the US from the mainland, and people
Speaker 4: at clubs start kind of mixing the two, and so
Speaker 4: you get this like mix of reggae with hip hop,
Speaker 4: and you get all of these kids kind of at
Speaker 4: the club messing around with us and just trying it out,
Speaker 4: and it's really just club music. Then it wasn't even
Speaker 4: called regatong. And I think there's one urban legend that
Speaker 4: Daddy Yankee's actually the person who coined the term Regatong
Speaker 4: because he said it like while freestyling in a song.
Speaker 5: But he was like sixteen years old and was like
Speaker 5: this guy who.
Speaker 4: Was like out, you know, at the club with a
Speaker 4: microphone kind of messing around. And so the story goes
Speaker 4: that he originally wanted to be like a baseball player
Speaker 4: in Puerto Rico and that was really his dream, but
Speaker 4: he was sort of ducking in and out of studios
Speaker 4: and rapping on the side in Puerto Rico, you know
Speaker 4: that where this you know music is really taking off,
Speaker 4: you know, wasn't like the most like wealthiest parts of
Speaker 4: Puerto Rico. And so he's out late one night and
Speaker 4: he gets shot in the leg and that kind of
Speaker 4: effectively ends his baseball career. So that's really when he's like,
Speaker 4: I'm going to focus only Andreazong, I'm going to be
Speaker 4: a rapper and really tries to make this career take off.
Speaker 4: So in Puerto Rico he was like among the biggest
Speaker 4: names just because he'd been doing it for so long.
Speaker 5: He had like a sort of like a duo like
Speaker 5: super group.
Speaker 4: With Nikiam for a while called Oskangi, And so by
Speaker 4: the time Gasolina comes along, this is on Barrauffino, which
Speaker 4: is his third album. So he's he's already had like
Speaker 4: not only like all of the music that he's featured
Speaker 4: on with like the Priato mixtapes and all the you know,
Speaker 4: the music that's kind of being recorded in the club,
Speaker 4: but he'd also had two albums before this, and he's
Speaker 4: talked about how, you know, when he made Barrifino, he
Speaker 4: kind of needed to win. Like it was like he
Speaker 4: was popular Puerto Rico, but it still wasn't kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, big.
Speaker 5: Enough to break through. And so this was really the
Speaker 5: album that like put him on the map.
Speaker 4: And he talks about just like pouring everything in because
Speaker 4: he like really needed, you know, he really needed to win,
Speaker 4: and he really needed something to bring his career to
Speaker 4: the next level.
Speaker 5: And ultimately that's what this song did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was sort of the impetus I guess for
Speaker 1: Gosolena taking off the way it did? I mean, especially
Speaker 1: given the I mean it's already a great song, it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful album. Like what sort of helped kind of
Speaker 1: give that song that edge to become this like larger
Speaker 1: than life like global hit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think part of it. One thing I
Speaker 4: really love about Gasolina. It's almost like the snippet of
Speaker 4: life in Puerto Rico, like even the name Gasolina. Daddy
Speaker 4: Yankees talked about how the song came to him because
Speaker 4: he was trying to write in his tiny apartment in
Speaker 4: Puerto Rico, and some guy walked by and was kind
Speaker 4: of joking to this girl and.
Speaker 5: Said a which is sort of.
Speaker 4: This slang term that means like, oh, like you like gasoline,
Speaker 4: like you love fast cars and guys who drive fast cars,
Speaker 4: and was kind of teasing this girl. And so I
Speaker 4: think it was that mix of kind of how snappy
Speaker 4: that you know, the actual choruses, and and it being
Speaker 4: sort of this like little snippet of of life in
Speaker 4: Puerto Rico. That with the production by Looney Tunes where
Speaker 4: it actually sound, you know, they really did everything to
Speaker 4: bring the idea of Gasolina and this sort of like
Speaker 4: rubbed up, you know, hydraulic heavy sound.
Speaker 5: To the song.
Speaker 4: And then also it was like two thousand and five,
Speaker 4: and I think at the time in pop music.
Speaker 5: Like there was sort of like this, there was starting.
Speaker 4: To be an interest in what was happening and in
Speaker 4: Puerto Rico and more globally and in other.
Speaker 5: Parts of the world.
Speaker 4: You know, like just a couple of years before, you
Speaker 4: had had you know, artists like Shakira and Ricky Martin
Speaker 4: breaking through kind of earlier in the two thousands, and
Speaker 4: this thing was bubbling in Puerto Rico that I think
Speaker 4: people were interested in but hadn't really figured out how
Speaker 4: to tap into. And you had songs that were starting
Speaker 4: to kind of identify the song like Oyami Ganto I think,
Speaker 4: is a really big one that kind of like hinted
Speaker 4: where this was going, But I think there was still
Speaker 4: some question at the time of you know, a song
Speaker 4: fully in Spanish hadn't really been done yet. All of
Speaker 4: these artists before, like Ricky, like Shakira, had done the
Speaker 4: crossover thing where they had sang in English, and all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, there was a song that was sort
Speaker 4: of catchy and big and you didn't really need to
Speaker 4: understand the lyrics to kind of get it. It was
Speaker 4: more about sort of the them and the sound, and
Speaker 4: so I think all of that sort of paved the
Speaker 4: way for this song to become as big as it did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like redefining that idea that a Spanish language
Speaker 1: artists needed to release an English language hit or song
Speaker 1: to cross over like it didn't didn't matter anymore.
Speaker 4: Exactly, I think, And I think this is really the
Speaker 4: precursor to what you see with you know, artists later
Speaker 4: like Bad Bunny and kiol G and artists now who
Speaker 4: are kind of realizing like, oh, actually you didn't you know,
Speaker 4: you don't really need to sing in English to be
Speaker 4: a massive global superstar. And I don't think enough people
Speaker 4: give that song credit because you know, it is such
Speaker 4: a song that is such sort of part of our
Speaker 4: cultural lexicon now, and like I think people kind of
Speaker 4: forget that it was a Spanish Like we act like
Speaker 4: Bad Bunny and and all these artists are doing is
Speaker 4: totally new, but actually this was a song in two
Speaker 4: thousand and five that was completely in Spanish, and most
Speaker 4: people kind of, you know, sing along and it's gibberish,
Speaker 4: but you get the you get the main idea.
Speaker 3: How do you think that Daddy Yanki saw himself as
Speaker 3: breaking that mold, as he said he wanted that win,
Speaker 3: but he didn't do any compromising. It doesn't sound like
Speaker 3: somebody who's eager for a win. It sounds like somebody
Speaker 3: who's super confident thinks he's won already.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think one thing is in Puerto Rico, by
Speaker 4: the time the song Blew Upong had really started to consolidate.
Speaker 4: I would even argue that, like as much of a
Speaker 4: pioneer as Daddy Yanki is, he wasn't sort of the
Speaker 4: first reggathong star. You know, you had Teoka Lerong before him,
Speaker 4: who had made e Laayarde, which to me is the
Speaker 4: greatest regatong record ever made. You had Dongo mad who
Speaker 4: was his full rival. So you had had already like
Speaker 4: these full on rivalries and storylines and characters in Reytong,
Speaker 4: and so I do think there was an element of
Speaker 4: it where Daddy Yanki was coming it from a perspective
Speaker 4: of like he wanted to win and he knew that
Speaker 4: there was a new level he could reach. But in
Speaker 4: a certain way, he was already a star, you know,
Speaker 4: in Puerto Rico, in Latin America, there had already been
Speaker 4: this kind of history that had already unraveled.
Speaker 5: With with Regyitong.
Speaker 4: And I think it's one of the reasons that the
Speaker 4: song feels so uncompromising and so, I mean it is
Speaker 4: even strange, I think for a ragatung song. You know,
Speaker 4: just the production of it and him kind of like
Speaker 4: rapping super fast in it. It is a little bit
Speaker 4: of a different take, I think on what was happening
Speaker 4: in Ragatong at the time. I think one of the
Speaker 4: best parts of the song is the female vocalist in
Speaker 4: the background. That's Glodi, who also was starting to become
Speaker 4: a reggaetong artist in her own way, and she wasn't
Speaker 4: credited on the song for the longest time, which I
Speaker 4: think also says a lot about, you know, the role
Speaker 4: of women in this genre, which it was not. You know,
Speaker 4: you had Evie Queen, but it was not the most
Speaker 4: receptive toward women, and there was I think a lot
Speaker 4: of like toxic masculinity and it was just like a
Speaker 4: very very male heavy genre. But I do think that
Speaker 4: like that addition of her voice on it is also
Speaker 4: something that makes that song really unique. And I think
Speaker 4: later that became something that sort of became like a
Speaker 4: format for you know, adding more women and eventually like
Speaker 4: people realizing they shouldn't just be an uncredited background vocalist,
Speaker 4: they should kind of be at the center.
Speaker 3: Did she have her own career was she now?
Speaker 5: I feel like her career kind of came later.
Speaker 4: She had a few songs, but she was she never
Speaker 4: really got her do and I wouldn't I wouldn't say
Speaker 4: that she was ever one of the biggest artists or
Speaker 4: female artists in Durgotong. And I mean, I mean truly, like,
Speaker 4: I think the only one that has had a lot
Speaker 4: of longevity is Evie Queen, you know who, who was
Speaker 4: also somebody that at the time was rapping in the clubs,
Speaker 4: you know, with with Daddy Yankee and rapping with the Noise,
Speaker 4: and they're really contemporaries.
Speaker 5: But I mean it's really very few women, which sucks.
Speaker 1: It feels like Evie's career even has gotten more of
Speaker 1: its due in recent years too, like in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, just like citing her as such like a
Speaker 1: massive kind of fore mother in the in the genre exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think it was an until like
Speaker 4: much more recently that people have kind of discovered her
Speaker 4: and and Gloria really didn't, you know, I don't. I
Speaker 4: don't think she had nearly as many songs or as
Speaker 4: many opportunities, but she's on this one, which is one
Speaker 4: of the one of the biggest ones.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And can you speak a little bit to
Speaker 1: the evolution of Rakoton over the years, and especially becoming
Speaker 1: one of the most dominant genres of music and one
Speaker 1: of the most popular and kind of spawning some of
Speaker 1: the biggest names in pop music even just right the second.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I don't think that anybody really could
Speaker 4: have predicted the commercial or global force that Regatoon would become.
Speaker 5: We're talking now Latin music.
Speaker 4: I think last year made a billion dollars, and so
Speaker 4: much of that is for you know, by regaetong, by
Speaker 4: how how massively popular it's gotten. And I think for
Speaker 4: a long time it felt like something that it was
Speaker 4: shunned in so many ways. You know, first it comes
Speaker 4: out of Puerto Rico, and I think it's really seen
Speaker 4: as sort of this like something from the streets. I
Speaker 4: think even in Puerto Rico, there was a lot of
Speaker 4: pushback toward it, like it was overly sexual, it was violent,
Speaker 4: it was you know, all these things, a lot of
Speaker 4: the same sort of attitudes that you got in early
Speaker 4: hip hop.
Speaker 5: It took into a gas solina.
Speaker 4: For the Latin music industry to really accept it and
Speaker 4: to kind of see it as a as a legitimate
Speaker 4: art form. And then even then, I think it took
Speaker 4: a long time to keep kind of bashing that door
Speaker 4: down and get you know, people to really see it
Speaker 4: as like as an art.
Speaker 5: Form that you could you could take seriously.
Speaker 4: And I want to say that Gasnina is the first
Speaker 4: song that was ever nominated for a Latin Grammy, Andreetong
Speaker 4: because of that song eventually like forced more Ragaton categories
Speaker 4: in the Latin Grammys, which now there are several. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of that started to change obviously with
Speaker 4: like that. You know that that kind of golden era
Speaker 4: of Reyzong when you had Daddy Yankee and Donga ma
Speaker 4: Antheo Calerong and those all became influences. If you look
Speaker 4: at the artist Andree Doong, now Bad Bunny, Carol G. J. Balman,
Speaker 4: I think all of them cite those kind of four
Speaker 4: bearers as you know, the reason that they started doing
Speaker 4: this and the reason that they got interested in Regatong
Speaker 4: to begin with. Bad Bunny has even said that Barruffino
Speaker 4: is his favorite album, like of all time and one
Speaker 4: of the albums that influenced him the most. It's definitely
Speaker 4: had like a crazy evolution, and I think Daddy Yankee
Speaker 4: has also had a crazy evolution because he was kind
Speaker 4: of there for the whole thing. He's an artist that
Speaker 4: sort of didn't go away the entire time, and sort
Speaker 4: of in every stage of Regathong was there kind of.
Speaker 5: Doing something different.
Speaker 4: We're trying, you know, to to kind of move with
Speaker 4: the genre, which I think you could. You saw it
Speaker 4: kind of go from more of a hip hop street
Speaker 4: style to then more of a commercial pop sound that
Speaker 4: was really big and sort of like the mid like that,
Speaker 4: you know, post Gasomnina era, to even like now.
Speaker 5: I mean he just released like a song a couple
Speaker 5: of years ago.
Speaker 4: He's still I think pretty relevant, even though he has
Speaker 4: since said that he's retiring, but.
Speaker 2: Because did he release just a couple of songs this year.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's still going. I think that's the that's the
Speaker 5: that's the funny thing.
Speaker 4: It's interesting how that song in some ways, I think
Speaker 4: has sort of become a novelty in some ways just
Speaker 4: because you know, it's kind of everywhere, and I think
Speaker 4: some people have kind of, you know, grown a little
Speaker 4: tired of it. But in a lot of ways, I
Speaker 4: think it still stands up. When we did our list
Speaker 4: of Greatest song Songs, we took like a vote kind
Speaker 4: of industry wide and it was number one, I would
Speaker 4: say on like almost every person's list, And you know,
Speaker 4: I think Gasolina has just like a really important role
Speaker 4: I think, and what tongue is. I think twenty twenty
Speaker 4: three was put on the on the Library of Congress's
Speaker 4: National Recording Registry and is the first Rayton song to
Speaker 4: ever get there. So I think it's one of those
Speaker 4: songs that kind of stands the test of time and
Speaker 4: really shows kind of how far this genre is come.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much. I feel like I just like,
Speaker 3: thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred
Speaker 3: Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling
Speaker 3: Stone and iHeartMedia. Written and hosted by me, Rob Sheffield
Speaker 3: and Britney Spanos. Executive produced by Gus Winner, Jason Fine,
Speaker 3: Alex Dale, and Christian Horde, and produced by Jesse Cannon,
Speaker 3: with music supervision by Eric Zeiler. Thanks for listening, Thanks
Speaker 3: for watching.