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Breakups are always hard — especially when media and children are involved. Shakira opened up about how her split from professional footballer Gerard Piqué has affected the former couple’s two sons, nine-year-old Milan and seven-year-old Sasha. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “They’re doing very well,” she told […]
The 2023 Billboard Latin Music Week — the longest running and biggest Latin music industry gathering in the world — is making way to Miami from Oct. 2 to 6, featuring star-studded panels, Q&A conversations, workshops and the En Vivo concert series.
Confirmed acts for this year’s weeklong conference and showcases include Shakira, Arcángel, RBD’s Christian Chávez, Christopher von Uckermann, and Maite Perroni, Beatriz Luengo, Carin León, Chencho Corleone, DannyLux, DJ Alex Sensation, DJ Nelson, Edgar Barrera, Eladio Carrión, Feid, Fonseca, GALE, Gonza, Greeicy, Grupo Frontera, Hyde, Ivy Queen, Fuerza Regida’s Jesús Ortiz Paz “JOP,” Keityn, Lasso, Luny Tunes, Maffio, Manuel Turizo, Maria Becerra, Mike Bahía, Myke Towers, Nacho, Natanael Cano, Nathy Peluso, Nicki Nicole, Pedro Capó, Peso Pluma, Santa Fe Klan, Sebastián Yatra, Thalía, Venesti, Vico C, Wisin, Yng Lvcas and Young Miko.
In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, which coincides with Latin Music Week, we curated the ultimate playlist featuring the hits of yesterday and today of all the artists set to speak at the conference.
Songs in the more than three-hour long playlist include Shakira and Fuerza Regida’s latest corrido “El Jefe,” Grupo Frontera and Peso Pluma’s “Tulum,” Manuel Turizo’s “La Bachata” and Myke Towers’ “Lala,” to name a few bangers.
Celebrated for more than 30 years, Billboard Latin Music Week also coincides with the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards, which will be broadcast live on Telemundo on Thursday, Oct. 5, from the Watsco Center in Miami.
Registration for the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Week is now open at BillboardLatinMusicWeek.com.
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For 2023, Billboard introduces the Latin Power Players Choice Award, a peer-voted accolade chosen by Billboard Pro members to honor the executive they believe has made the most impact across the Latin music business over the past year. After three rounds of voting, Billboard Pro members have chosen Walter Kolm, founder and CEO of WK […]
The first time Nelson Albareda promoted a show at the Madison Square Garden complex in New York — not at the arena proper, but at the 5,600-capacity theater beneath it — everyone told him, “You’re going to lose your ass.” Albareda, a Miami-born Cuban, had assembled what to him was a dream lineup: a 50th-anniversary celebration of groundbreaking salsa artist and Fania Records co-founder Johnny Pacheco, featuring Pacheco and the Fania All-Stars. Still, his detractors were right: Albareda lost $200,000 on the 2006 show.
But after the music ended, the promoter was still buzzing. At midnight, he took his parents, who had attended, to a nearby deli, where his father asked, “How are you laughing? You lost 200 grand!”
“Well, it’s part of the business,” Albareda told him. “We keep moving on.”
Seventeen years later, Albareda, now 47, stands by that take. “In this business, you lose money, and it’s not how quickly you fall but how quickly you come back,” he says.
That fearlessness has helped Albareda become one of today’s most successful music executives. After nearly two decades working at labels and in radio, marketing and concert promotion, including as the leader of his formidable company Eventus, Albareda founded Loud And Live in 2017. The forward-thinking outfit’s flywheel-style model combines independent concert promotion — in 2022, it ranked at No. 14 on Billboard Boxscore’s year-end promoters chart with $96.5 million grossed, propelled by major tours including arena runs by Camilo and Ricardo Arjona — with marketing, brand partnerships and a content development studio. Loud And Live’s breadth reflects Albareda’s own guiding ethos, which emphasizes a broader culture and how disparate revenue streams fit into it, rather than focusing on just one or two of those streams.
“I was very proud of my culture and my heritage, and I wanted to give back,” Albareda says. “I got into music because of culture and because of pride, not necessarily because of the business — even though I ended up being in the business.”
For Albareda, who grew up in Miami during a “golden age” for music in the city in the 1980s, running Loud And Live is a natural fit. As a kid, he would listen to any cassettes or CDs he could get his hands on — he cites Cuban salsa singer Willie Chirino as a childhood favorite and inspiration — and he fondly recalls attending the Calle Ocho festival, where he saw Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine perform.
“I grew up in a moment where Miami defined different sounds within the music business and always wanted to be part of that, primarily because of culture and the heritage of my parents,” he says.
Albareda’s entrée into the industry, while circuitous, laid the foundation for his interdisciplinary career. As a Miami Dade College freshman, he scored a meeting with Bacardi executives and successfully pitched “a branded entertainment concept … mixing music and cigars and the whole lifestyle around a big band.” As the project of “creating a 1950s, 1960s tropical salsa band” commenced, the team enlisted Celia Cruz — and when executives from her label, RMM, got to know Albareda, they offered him a publicity job in-house. RMM was distributed by Universal, then affiliated with the Bronfman family, which owned beverage conglomerate Seagrams; Albareda shared office space with the spirits division and began consulting for the likes of Absolut and Chivas Regal. The experience was formative, and after leaving RMM, he logged time at advertising agency Sanchez and Levitan before landing in radio at Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., where he deployed his passions for music and marketing.
“I saw an opportunity to make money on everything but the radio,” Albareda says. “I started a team that would do events, concerts, festivals — and then we also would go to the brands and say, ‘Hey, you’re Procter & Gamble. How do I help you?’ ”
Albareda understood the deep bond between radio audiences, particularly Hispanic listeners, and their favorite stations — and how it could be harnessed to deliver returns to brand partners. “You listened to that morning show, and you trusted that morning show,” he says. “You trusted the conviction that those are your friends. You wake up every day with them; you drive home with them. That’s what I built: You had the relationship with the artists, you had the relationship with the brands, you have the relationship with the listeners.”
As the company underwent changes, culminating in its absorption into Univision, Albareda realized, “Hey, I can do this without radio. Let me go on my own and really focus on this.” His first, short-lived attempt, a company called Unipro Group, failed when the 26-year-old Albareda misjudged the viability of a Christmas event and lost $3 million. “It was a decisive moment in my life,” he says now. “You realize when you’re at the bottom, you don’t have that many friends.”
After regrouping, in early 2005, he founded Eventus, which would focus on marketing and brands — not just because he knew the area well, but because he now lacked the capital to put on events. Eventus’ first client was the Latin Recording Academy, then still relatively new and looking to grow its footprint. Albareda helped it do just that, particularly through the sponsorship-driven event property Latin Grammy Street Parties, which staged open-air festivals in major cities nationwide. Brands took notice.
“We became the go-to guys for corporate America to connect anything that was culture with brands, specifically in the multicultural market,” Albareda says. “Our core was Hispanic. One by one, we started growing, and we built a company that worked with 60 brands. McDonald’s, Walmart, Dr Pepper, Verizon … those were all clients of ours.”
From left: El Alfa, Nelson Albareda, and Silvestre Dangond photographed on September 5, 2023 at Loud And Live in Doral, Fla.
Melody Timothee
With 40% growth year over year, Eventus also had runway to enter concert promotion, and Albareda focused on the South Florida market. After selling Eventus, now one of America’s biggest multicultural marketing players, to Advantage Solutions in 2013, Albareda remained as CEO until 2016, when he struck out on his own (on May 20, Cuban Independence Day, he observes) with a noncompete clause and free time to boat, fish and develop the kernel of the idea that would become Loud And Live.
“We are marketers turned promoters — versus a lot of the entertainment companies out there, and a lot of the promoters out there want to become marketers,” Albareda says of launching his current company in 2017. Because he understood “what brands want,” he could facilitate the types of partnerships that help make tours profitable. But his decision to focus on touring at Loud And Live before branching out into agency work — effectively reversing his Eventus path — was also borne of necessity: His noncompete around live entertainment expired first.
“When we started, artists would pick up our calls because of brands, but they didn’t necessarily trust us with touring,” Albareda says. To build Loud And Live’s reputation, he deviated from the industry trend — “Everybody was going after urban,” he recalls — and decided to pursue “five or six iconic artists that we can make an impact [with] and that other artists look up to.” He began with Juan Luis Guerra and later added Arjona, Carlos Vives, Franco De Vita and Ricardo Montaner, who all then spread the gospel of Loud And Live. And once Albareda was able to reenter the agency space with Loud And Live, what the company could offer clients clarified.
“The businesses here are all synergistic,” he says. “The way that we treat artists, we are their partner when they’re touring and when they’re not touring. We’re not that promoter that signs a deal, puts a tour [on and says,] ‘See ya.’ ”
Loud And Live’s attentiveness to its clients runs “from the manager to the engineer all the way up to the manager to the artist,” Albareda explains, and while he’s emphatic that “in this business anybody can write a check; we can write a check,” it has helped the company compete with deeper-pocketed, more established competitors.
“They’ve bet a lot on me and will continue to do so,” says Colombian vallenato artist Silvestre Dangond, who will embark on his fifth Loud And Live-promoted tour in 2024. “We have a lot of love for each other. I feel like he’s not even my promoter because of the way he talks to me. He has created a team that’s a hybrid of who he is, with his personality, his positivity, good energy. He’s very decent and very human.”
Adds WK Entertainment founder/CEO Walter Kolm, who manages Dangond and other Loud And Live clients like Vives and Prince Royce: “Nelson is a promoter, but his advantage is that he also thinks like a manager. On top of being a hard worker and great at his job, Nelson is such a kind human, and [that] makes working with him the greatest pleasure.”
The pandemic interrupted Loud And Live’s growth, but now the company is firing on all cylinders. After orchestrating a partnership between McDonald’s and J Balvin in 2020, Loud And Live has continued connecting the restaurant chain with artists including Prince Royce, Nicky Jam and Manuel Turizo. The company’s brand portfolio now includes Pepsi, Walmart, Mattel and Michael Kors. When Becky G embarked on her first headlining tour on Sept. 14, she did it with Loud And Live as her promoter — and with a fresh Vita Coco partnership facilitated by the company. Other fall tours for the promoter include U.S. runs by Vives, El Alfa and Diego El Cigala.
With in-person concerts on pause during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Loud And Live was able to grow its content division more quickly than anticipated, and it won a Latin Grammy for its 2021 Juan Luis Guerra concert special. When Lionel Messi signed with Inter Miami CF, the soccer team (already a Loud And Live client) turned to Albareda to help roll out the superstar’s arrival — and Loud And Live assembled LaPresentaSíon, a concert featuring Camilo, Tiago PZK and more. (“All music artists look up to athletes; all athletes look up to artists,” Albareda says.)
And philanthropically, in keeping with his MO that his work place the culture, not business, first, Albareda announced a $1 million donation to the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation late last year; the funds, to be disbursed over five years, will go toward college scholarships, grants and educational programs.
“Throughout his career, Nelson has been an avid supporter of the Latin Recording Academy and our sister organization, the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation, donating time and resources to our events as well as engaging as an advocate to share our mission and vision with artists,” says Latin Recording Academy CEO Manuel Abud. “Among [his] greatest professional strengths are the intangible qualities that are from the heart, particularly his passion for Latin music.”
But despite Loud And Live’s success, Albareda still possesses the scrappy drive that fueled him at his Garden debut nearly 20 years ago. The father of three says he works 18-hour days, adding that his “aspiration is to be the leading Latin promoter and entertainment company in the world.” Immediately before the pandemic, Loud And Live partnered with Move Concerts, a major Latin American promoter that works across genres, to increase its presence in Central and South America, and Albareda is now eyeing expansion into Europe.
And his vision isn’t restricted to Latin music: In November, Thomas Rhett and Sam Hunt will headline the inaugural Country Bay Music Festival, Loud And Live’s first foray into the country market and an attempt to introduce a major country festival in Miami. “Country is a genre that is very similar in culture to Latin,” Albareda observes. “It’s a tight-knit community of family, core values, every song is a story — and we also know that Hispanics overindex in country music. Over 30% of country music fans in the U.S. today identify of Latino origin … My great-great-grandfather came here in 1876. Why is it that I can’t do country music?”
As he navigates a turbulent industry and the attendant pivots, Albareda returns to essential traits like perseverance, determination and trustworthiness. “We don’t sell widgets,” he says. “We sell relationships.”
Additional reporting by Griselda Flores.
This story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023, issue of Billboard.
The Jenni Rivera Estate has filed a lawsuit against Cintas Acuario, a West Coast-based indie label owned by the late singer’s father Don Pedro Rivera. Ayana Musical, another music company also owned by him, is named in a complaint filed on Wednesday (Sept. 20) in California by Jacquelin Campos — who last year took over as head of the Jenni Rivera estate.
According to the 39-page lawsuit, before and after the singer’s untimely death in 2012, the música mexicana star’s father, along with the companies aforementioned, “exploited” sound recordings and musical compositions written, recorded, produced and performed by Jenni during her lifetime. Furthermore, the defendants “exploited Jenni’s name, image and likeness to the tune of tens of millions of dollars,” the complaint alleges.
The civil case also claims that the plaintiffs have “repeatedly” asked the companies to “act in accordance to the terms of agreements entered into by Jenni during the early part of her career” and to stop claiming to own and control rights to Jenni’s music. The companies have refused to do so, according to the suit, which is why the Jenni Rivera Estate has decided to file the lawsuit, “holding each of them liable for their unlawful acts” and seeking the return of money collected and withheld from the plaintiffs.
While owned by Don Pedro Rivera, the lawsuit says the day-to-day operations of the company are carried out by Jenni’s siblings, Rosie Rivera — who previously served as head of the Jenni Rivera estate — and Juan Rivera. “This matter provides a perfect illustration of the significant and lasting impact that money, power, and greed can have on a family,” the lawsuit reads.
Cintas Acuario did not return Billboard‘s request for comment at press time.
Jenni entered her first recording agreement with Cintas Acuario in 1993 when she began her career. According to the lawsuit, the three-year deal provided Cintas with “several” rights to the sound recordings and albums recorded, produced and distributed under the 1993 Recording Agreement. It also granted the rights to manufacture and distribute merchandise in connection to the promotion and sale of her music. In return, Cintas was “obligated” to provide Jenni with statements and make royalty payments to her on a quarterly basis. According to the complaint, “the obligation to account and pay royalties owed to Jenni in connection with the 1993 deal was never waived or otherwise terminated. Thus, the foregoing obligations subsisted in favor of plaintiffs as Jenni’s successors-in-interest, following her death in December of 2012.”
The most successful woman in regional Mexican on the Billboard charts, Rivera died in an small aircraft accident in 2012 at the age of 43. She has a total of 19 entries on Top Latin Albums, 12 of which reached the top 10 and seven of which topped the chart. She has earned a total of 12 entries on the Billboard 200 and has 14 top 10 hits on the Regional Mexican Airplay tally. Most recently, Jenni’s children released the posthumous album Misión Cumplida.
In a press release issued in light of the lawsuit, the Jenni Rivera Estate said that it is “grateful for the support and understanding of the fans during this challenging period” but will refrain from making any further statements.
Read the lawsuit below:
Giving back was the theme of Cheetos’ Deja tu Huella Community College Tour and the first stop in the nationwide trek brought out the likes of one special guest, Becky G.
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On Thursday, September 7, the Latin superstar appeared at the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College to help spearhead the event, which jump started an initiative to give out 500 scholarships this year. During her special appearance, the star, who serves as the brand’s first-ever fingertip spokesperson, took to the stage at the Culinary Pathway building and shared remarks with the students about why this partnership made so much sense.
“I can’t express enough what it means to me to have this wholesome moment with Cheetos,” she told the audience. “I used to sell my Cheetos in my backpack at school. That’s right. Thinking about what Cheetos has done for the community and when [the brand] came to me to be a part of the Cheetos familia and the Deja tu Huella, it was an obvious yes for me.” Among the other notable names at the event included LATTC President Dr. Alfred McQuarters, LACCD Chancellor Dr. Francisco Rodriguez and more.
For the culminating moment in the presentation, the star invited brand ambassador Brizzo Torres, famed mascot Chester Cheetah and more to join in on a dance-off, giving the audience a glimpse at some synchronized dance moves. Later on in the day, a block party outside of the building was set-up to give students the opportunity to engage in career-boosting workshops, see artist Bobby Alvarez show off his mural skills, get their hands on free Cheetos samples and dance along to tunes provided by 102.7 KIIS FM.
After the appearance, Becky sat down with Billboard News to speak about why the Deja tu Huella mission means so much to her. “As a little girl born and raised in Inglewood, who has had the chance to tour the world and do so many things, I want the same for others in communities like mine,” she told host Tetris Kelly. As for what’s up next for the star, the singer is about to embark on her first headlining tour, “Mi Casa, Tu Casa Tour,” later this September. “I get to sing all my Becky G music from the last couple years, which is crazy to think about because I’ve been doing this for a minute now,” she explained of the 16-date tour.
For more information on Cheetos’ Deja tu Huella campaign, head over to the campaign’s official website, and get ready for the brand to take over Miami as part of Billboard Latin Music Week. Click here for more details on the week-long festivities.
Shakira walks into a luxurious upstairs suite at Miami Beach’s Versace mansion wearing high-waisted jeans, a loose T-shirt and a baseball cap pushed low over her forehead, her hair pulled back in a tangle of dirty-blonde braids. Far from cameras, her face is practically devoid of makeup save for mascara, and her eyes are wide over prominent cheekbones. Clear-skinned, barely over 5 feet tall in her sneakers, she looks young and almost fragile — a far cry from the powerful, wrathful woman she has played in her recent, hugely successful songs and music videos.
“I’m still in a reflective period,” she says pensively. “I’m still exorcising some demons. The last I have left,” she adds with a hearty laugh.
One of the most recognizable and celebrated stars on the planet, Shakira is also notoriously meticulous, a perfectionist known for leaving little to chance. But in the past 14 months, the 46-year-old has thrown convention, expectations and her own personal brand of allure-driven celebrity to the wind following her infamous split from Spanish soccer star Gerard Piqué, her partner of over a decade and the father of her two children, Milán, 10, and Sasha, 8. Covered ruthlessly by Spanish tabloids, the separation amid allegations of infidelity on Piqué’s part was immortalized when Shakira recorded “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” with Argentine DJ Bizarrap, an incendiary track in which she made a proclamation that became a global feminist mantra: “Women don’t cry; we make money.” The song hit No. 2 on the Billboard Global 200.
But lost amid the tabloid coverage, the four Guinness World Records that “Sessions” set and multiple Billboard milestones (including becoming the first female vocalist to debut in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 with a Spanish-language track) was the fact that between motherhood and marital bliss in Barcelona, it had been nearly a decade since Shakira had achieved anywhere near the success she has had in the past year; her last No. 1 on the Hot Latin Songs chart was “Chantaje,” with Maluma, back in 2016.
This year, she has already landed two No. 1s on the ranking: “Sessions” and “TQG,” with Karol G. (Both also reached the Hot 100’s top 10, and “TQG” topped the Billboard Global 200.) And in the past 12 months, she has placed six hits on the chart, all of them alluding to her separation and the range of emotions it has generated, from intense rage to deep sorrow to faint hope.
However torturous the process of setting those emotions to music has been, the result is that the now-single mother of two is once again one of the world’s hottest artists in any language, with 2024 plans for a new album and a global tour, respectively her first since 2017’s El Dorado and its corresponding 2018 trek.
The irony of the most tumultuous period of her personal life fueling a mid-career renaissance isn’t lost on Shakira.
“I feel like a cat with more than nine lives; whenever I think I can’t get any better, I suddenly get a second wind,” she says. “I’ve gone through several stages: denial, anger, pain, frustration, anger again, pain again. Now I’m in a survival stage. Like, just get your head above water. And it’s a reflection stage. And a stage of working very hard and when I have time with my children, really spend it with them.”
Iris van Herpen dress and headpiece.
Ruven Afanador
Shakira has always been remarkably eloquent, both in her native Spanish and in the English she learned as an adult when she crossed over into mainstream pop. In conversation, she bounces between languages almost reflexively as she searches for just the right word, bilingually expressing a wicked, sometimes self-deprecating sense of humor — and a sincerity that’s startling for such a scrutinized artist.
At the Versace mansion, she settles cross-legged into a big, blue armchair. She asks for black coffee; it has been a long night at the studio, followed by an early morning getting the kids ready for school. She has a craving for chocolates, and soon, a tray is delivered loaded with a variety of bars and bonbons. She goes for the latter and eats one with relish, then another. She chats freely about children, life and loss, laughing often and pausing to take a call from Sasha, who is in his first week of school after the summer break and at a friend’s house.
“My love, remember to pick up your plate, wash your hands and say thank you after eating,” Shakira reminds him. She sounds like a regular mom — highlighting the earthiness that has won the oft-barefoot performer so many fans.
“Attaining success is of course complicated, but far more complex is maintaining it through time. Shakira has demonstrated in a thousand ways that she belongs to this very select group. Every time she releases a song or an album, her shadow is again gigantic,” says Sony Music Latin Iberia chairman/CEO Afo Verde, a confidante who has worked very closely with Shakira through the years, particularly since May, when the Colombian star relocated from Barcelona to Miami.
Since then, she has been spending most days at 5020, Sony’s state-of-the-art recording studios and rehearsal space in Miami, working with a steady flow of creatives that includes top producer-songwriter Edgar Barrera, who has collaborated with Maluma, Peso Pluma and Grupo Frontera, among others.
“Of all the artists I’ve worked with, she’s the most perfectionist, the most meticulous,” says Barrera, who worked on several songs with her, including “Clandestino,” with Maluma. “She knows exactly what she wants and what she doesn’t want. She’ll request things like a change of frequency in a kick. After working with her, I understand why she’s where she’s at and why she has been at No. 1 so many times.”
Iris van Herpen headpiece.
Ruven Afanador
For Verde, Shakira’s proximity has helped him support her creative process in a way that has hugely accelerated her output. “She’s one of those few cases in the world who, despite the passage of time, continues to work with the same excitement, quality, respect and attention to detail as she did in the beginning. She works with whoever makes sense for her artistic pursuit. She doesn’t care if they’re established or up and coming. For her, art comes first.”
Case in point: Fuerza Regida, the Southern California Mexican quintet that has scored five Hot 100 entries in the past year with its brash, homegrown take on norteño music but remains far from a household name. When Shakira’s team reached out to lead singer JOP in July to ask if he was interested in collaborating on the recently released “El Jefe” with her, the 26-year-old got on a flight to Miami the next day without having heard a note of the proposed track.
“It’s Shakira! Do you understand what I mean?” JOP says. “There isn’t anything else to say. I grew up listening to Shakira, and after all the challenges to reach where I am now, to collaborate with one of the greatest artists in the world… It’s crazy! It had me mind-blowed.”
In May, Billboard honored Shakira as its first ever Latin Woman of the Year; in July, Premios Juventud gave her its Agent of Change Award; and on Sept. 12, she received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards, where she also performed a dazzling, 10-minute medley of hits.
Still, she admits, for the past seven years, she has been sidetracked by family matters and life in Barcelona, far from music industry action. That changed a little over a year ago, when she split with Piqué and began cathartically pouring her heart into her songs. Several milestones followed in quick succession. “Te Felicito,” with Rauw Alejandro, reached No. 10 on Hot Latin Songs and No. 67 on the Hot 100 in May and June of 2022, respectively; in November, “Monotonía,” with Ozuna (its video shows Shakira’s heart literally torn from her body and squished by a shoe on the sidewalk), climbed to No. 3 on Hot Latin Songs; and earlier this year, “Sessions” and “TQG” surged in popularity.
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Suddenly, Shakira was no longer a distant celebrity, but one of the most streamed stars on the planet. (At press time, she was Spotify’s most streamed Latin woman artist ever.)
Simultaneously, Shakira — who essentially pioneered the concept of global touring in the Latin realm and made history when she co-headlined the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show with Jennifer Lopez — revived conversations about hitting the road. While details remain under wraps, her upcoming tour, says WME music partner Keith Sarkisian, will include arena and stadium shows in nearly two dozen countries across Latin America, North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East.
“Shakira has established herself as a remarkable and influential artist over the past 20-plus years,” says Live Nation Entertainment CEO/president Michael Rapino, whose relationship with the singer dates back to her 2007 Oral Fixation tour. “She has grown a massive global fan base through her captivating performances and unique blend of pop, rock, Latin and world influences. We can’t wait to see her on stages around the world for her biggest tour yet.”
Shakira agrees. “I think this will be the tour of my life. I’m very excited. Just think, I had my foot on the brakes. Now I’m pressing on the accelerator — hard.”
First order of the day: Are the kids happy in school?
They’re doing very well. They love it. In Barcelona, they carried the weight of being “the children of…,” and the media situation was hard on them. We had paparazzi at our doorstep every single day. Here, they’re normal children who enjoy normalcy, which is what school should be: a safe haven where they can be themselves. And because they’re sociable and pretty open, it was easy for them to adapt.
Have you adapted?
I’m still in the process! (Laughs.) I’ve lost a bit of my mental plasticity with time. The last time I lived here, I was 21 or so. Miami has changed. There wasn’t as much traffic before.
Do you still enjoy driving?
Yes. I still drive myself. I drive a total soccer mom car: a Toyota Sienna. Not sexy at all. There are no sexy cars in my house. The only sexy thing in my house is me. (Laughs.)
I’ve seen you going out a lot. I didn’t know you were such a social butterfly.
Me either! I didn’t know it because I really was lazy about going out [before]. My favorite outfit is my PJs. But my kids are big Miami Heat fans. Milán is a fan of all sports. So I have to take him to all the baseball games, all the basketball games, all the hockey games. Never in my life have I gone to so many sporting events. And then, when they’re with their dad, I work from morning to night, and then I have a margarita with my friends.
Did your lifestyle change dramatically over the last year?
Dramatically. Aside from the fact that it’s been a drama, the time I have with my children, [I] really spend it with them. For example, this summer, the time they spent with me, I devoted entirely to them. I didn’t work, and they didn’t go to camp. They went to Camp Shakira. If I can only have them half the time, I’m going to make the most out of my half.
Versace dress and gloves, Giuseppe Zanotti boots.
Ruven Afanador
How does this affect your music?
Now that I spent a week in Los Angeles, for example, I put in everything: studio, work, meetings, work, work, work, work until late, then meet up with my girlfriends that I haven’t seen in a while and go out at night like in the old days. (Laughs.) I put everything, leisure and pleasure, in the same week but very compacted because then I have to come back and be a mom again, the head of the household, and then I can’t do anything because I have the children with me all the time. As far as the music, it still comes from a very reflective place.
But the upside to all you’ve been through seems to be that you’ve produced some of your most successful music in years. Would you agree?
Well, the thing is, I was dedicated to him. To the family, to him. It was very difficult for me to attend to my professional career while in Barcelona. It was complicated logistically to get a collaborator there. I had to wait for agendas to coincide or for someone to deign to come. I couldn’t leave my children and just go somewhere to make music outside my house. It was hard to maintain the rhythm. Sometimes I had ideas I couldn’t lock down. Right now, I have an idea and I can immediately collaborate with whomever I want to. Something inescapable about Miami, Los Angeles, the U.S. in general is I have the logistical and technical support, the resources, the tools, the people. Living in Spain, all that was on hold.
I hadn’t thought about it that way…
That’s why my career was a third priority. The last time I released an album was six years ago. Now I can release music at a faster clip, although sometimes I think being a single mom and the rhythm of a pop star aren’t compatible. I have to put my kids to bed, go to the recording studio; everything is uphill. When you don’t have a husband who can stay home with the kids, it’s constant juggling because I like to be a present mom and I need to be there every moment with my children: take them to school, have breakfast with them, take them to play dates. And aside from that, I have to make money.
It’s so complicated to be a working mom — we’re taught we can do everything, but something always suffers. What do you think?
I haven’t been to the gym in a year. Well, I’ve gone a couple of times. I don’t know how long it’s been since I got a massage. I have torticollis! Something’s got to give. My neck. My traps. That’s what gives. It’s hard to do everything.
Before all this happened, were you concerned about releasing new music, or were you happy in your Barcelona state of mind?
My priority was my home, my family. I believed in “till death do us part.” I believed that dream, and I had that dream for myself, for my children. My parents have been together, I don’t know, 50 years, and they love each other like the first day, with a love that’s unique and unrepeatable. So I know it’s possible. My mom doesn’t leave my [sick] father’s side. They still kiss on the mouth. And it has always been my example. It’s what I wanted for myself and my children, but it didn’t happen. If life gives you lemons, you have to make lemonade. That’s what I’m doing: making lemonade.
Gaurav Gupta dress.
Ruven Afanador
Tell me about your upcoming singles. You’ve been collaborating with all Latin artists lately. Is that a calculated decision?
It has all been very organic. I’m coming out with something in September and maybe in November. The new single is a collab with Fuerza Regida. It’s a Mexican ska, and it sounds very fresh, very original, very punk in a way. It has tons of energy. The song is called “El Jefe” [“The Boss”], and it’s about abuse of power. We had the song and thought, “Oy, who could we get for this?,” and we thought of Fuerza Regida. JOP’s voice is very special. We wrote him, and he flew in the following day from Los Angeles and we recorded it in three days.
[Regarding “TQG” with Karol G], Karol is going through a good moment, plus we were both going through [public breakups] that have a common denominator. That inspired the song, which we both worked on. It was a project I believed in from the onset, and that’s why I invested so much time in it.
This was a highly anticipated and very successful collaboration. Would you say you devoted more time and resources to “TQG” than other recent singles?
Well, the Ozuna video [for “Monotonía”] was also my idea. Most videos I end up co-directing, co-writing, even designing the objects with the art department. I really get involved all the way because I feel the audiovisual world [also] expresses a very oneiric side and connects with the song from the subconscious. It allows the subconscious to speak. When I’m making a video, I close my eyes and dream.
With that in mind, why have a siren in your new music video for “Copa Vacía” with Manuel Turizo?
Because the siren is a symbol that represents that part of me that was abducted and taken from a world where she belongs to a world where she doesn’t belong. A world she had to make enormous sacrifice to be in. A world where perhaps she lacked oxygen. But in the end, she returns to the sea because it’s her destiny, just like I returned to Miami. (Laughs.) This siren was first abducted and then, for love, is next to this man, captive and locked up in a way. Sacrificing her own well-being and what is natural for her for love. And then she ends up thrown in the trash and surrounded by rats.
That’s intense.
Right? And I don’t know if you knew this, but there are real rats around me in the video. Because believe me, I’m still surrounded by rats. But every time less and less. That has been a big part of what I’ve been doing this past year: cleaning the house, exterminating the rats.
But your music returned. That’s the silver lining.
There’s always a silver lining. Life always manages to compensate somehow. In one year, I lost what I loved most, the person I most trusted, my best friend: my father. He has lost many of his neurological functions as a result of the accident he had in Barcelona [a fall in June 2022]. And he went to Barcelona precisely to console me, to support me at the time of my separation. I thought, “How can so many things happen to me in a year?” But that’s life.
From there, my music has also taken new flight, and I suppose that’s the way life compensates. You subtract on one end and add on the other. It’s pure mathematics. In my ninth life, I’ll tell you what the total is. Sometimes I think happiness isn’t for everyone. Happiness is a luxury, a commodity. Some people are born to be happy, and some people are born to do things, serve the community. I don’t know.
Are you happy now?
It’s a very short question for a very long answer. I don’t think everyone has access to happiness. It’s reserved for a very select number of people, and I can’t say I’m part of the club at this moment. There are moments of happiness, distraction, moments of reflection. There are also still moments of nostalgia, and my music right now feeds off that cocktail.
Iris van Herpen headpiece.
Ruven Afanador
You obviously didn’t plan any of this. You weren’t looking for a No. 1, but for a creative outlet, correct?
Exactly. I was trying to work out and understand my emotions in search of a catharsis.
In 2021, you sold the music publishing rights to your catalog of 145 songs at the time to Hipgnosis. Why?
I’m very friendly with Merck [Mercuriadis]. He’s a musicology expert who knows my catalog intimately from the very first song I wrote when I was 8 years old. I know my compositions are in the best hands with him as the custodian for them, and I’m very happy. They’re doing a really good job. If you sell your catalog, you want to know it’s to someone who values your music and knows about music.
Are you at all worried about artificial intelligence?
I was shown how I sound with AI. But I don’t think they got it right yet. I don’t hear myself there. The letter E, for example, sounds like my voice, but not the other four vowels. I think it’s going to be hard for AI to imitate me. And I have bigger fish to fry right now. My biggest concern is figuring out how Milán can practice American football, soccer and baseball in the same week.
I know you’re planning to tour next year, and I saw photos of you at Beyoncé’s tour. It looked like you were having fun.
Oh, no. I was working! (Laughs.) I definitely can’t tour with as many trucks as Beyoncé, but I was taking notes.
Something I’ve always loved about your tours is that they are pretty much all you. That you don’t need…
So much stuff? In a way, I wanted to prove to myself that I could support the entire weight of a show. In fact, many of my tours had no dancers and a limited production. In the [2002-03] Tour of the Mongoose, which was one of my most successful tours, with the biggest production, I traveled with that serpent that rose at the beginning of the show, remember? That serpent cost $1 million and, transporting the serpent, several million more. When the tour ended, my manager asked for his commission, and I said, “Aha, and how much did I make from the tour?” He said, “No, you lost $6 million. Didn’t you want to travel with that cobra?” You live and learn.
Putting a tour together is fun, but it’s a great effort and you have to put everything on the balance and decide what the fans really want to hear, what songs you want to hear and how much production you want. In the end, the more production you have, the higher the ticket price. I want the tickets to be affordable. But to me, the most important thing is the repertoire. That’s why I think [my next tour] will be the tour of a lifetime, because I have so many songs.
Versace dress and gloves, Giuseppe Zanotti boots.
Ruven Afanador
Do you think that in five years, when you look back, you’ll see this moment in a more positive light?
Like a blessing in disguise? I think that nothing can compensate for the pain of destroying a family. Of course, I have to keep going for my children’s sake; that’s my greatest motivation. But my biggest dream, more than collecting platinum albums and Grammys, was to raise my sons with their father. Overcome obstacles and grow old together. I know I’m not getting that now.
What did you learn about yourself in this process that surprised you?
My strength. I thought I was much weaker. I used to crumble before the stupidest problems. I’d create a drama because I chipped my tooth or that kind of stuff. But maturing, going through truly difficult things, gives you a sense of perspective and empathy. You learn how to value the good moments and how not to amplify the bad ones.
Before, when I didn’t have real problems, I was a true drama queen. I remember one time, Gerard bought me a diamond ring because I chipped a tooth on The Voice and I was crying so much. I was inconsolable. I was also pregnant, so I was highly hormonal. Now I chip a tooth, and it doesn’t go beyond being a little inconvenience that you fix with a visit to the dentist. I wouldn’t cry over it for two days in a row like I used to back in the day when I used to be happy.
At a time when there seems to be no taboos left in Latin music in terms of content and image, do you think a lot about what you want to say or portray in your music?
I’ve always been very conscious of the fact that what a public person expresses or says has an echo and an impact over others. And I am convinced that we have to serve the community through our work and help the world become a better place. As a woman, I feel I have a responsibility. I also think music is a tool, a platform for validation as a woman and to validate my own ideas, but there isn’t a calculated intent behind what I do. But I do understand the responsibility that comes with what I have and with being a public person and being able to do music for such a long time and reach several generations. I know little girls see me, go to my concerts, listen to my music. That’s always in the back of my head.
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“Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” generated a lot of controversy. People were divided over whether you should have spoken out. Was that a difficult decision?
When I did that session, people on my team were saying, “Please change this. Don’t even think about coming out with those lyrics.” And I said, “Why not?” I’m not a diplomat in the United Nations. I’m an artist, and I have the right to work on my emotions through my music. It’s my catharsis and my therapy, but it’s also the therapy of many people. I know I’m the voice of many people, and I’m not being pretentious, just realistic. I lend my voice to many women who maybe also wanted to say the same things I said and perhaps haven’t had the validation to do so. I think songs like the Bizarrap session or like the one I did with Karol have given many women strength, self-empowerment, self-confidence and also the backing to express and say what they need to say.
And without the need to be vulgar or graphic?
No, but going straight to the jugular. I don’t know how to go anywhere else.
Michelle Yeoh, who is 61 years old, won the Academy Award for best actress this year. In her speech, she said, “Ladies, don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime.” Ours is a very ageist industry. What do you think of those words?
When the year started and I got that first No. 1, then the other, back-to-back, I thought, “This can’t be happening to me at 46 years old.” It was so exciting to break the mold or reinvent the paradigms, and also, because that’s how you change things. I feel I have more energy now than at many other times in my life. Now the studio is one of my happy places. In the past, it wasn’t so much like that. There were moments where I had a love/hate relationship. There was a bit of a fear factor in the studio, at the prospect of being before a blank canvas. But now, when I’m about to start a song, my feelings are more of anticipation. Maybe because I’m not such a control freak as I used to be?
Really?
I’ve let go a lot! I still control, but I’m not a freak. Who doesn’t like control in a way? You want to realize your vision. But I’ve let go a lot. If I were to chip my tooth now, I’d probably spill a tear or two, but I wouldn’t cry the whole day.
This story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Shakira walks into a luxurious upstairs suite at Miami Beach’s Versace mansion wearing high-waisted jeans, a loose T-shirt and a baseball cap pushed low over her forehead, her hair pulled back in a tangle of dirty-blonde braids. Far from cameras, her face is practically devoid of makeup save for mascara, and her eyes are wide […]
Even if you don’t know the name or the backstory, you probably know the sound: Boom-ch-boom-chick, boom-ch-boom-chick, boom-ch-boom-chick. Listen to pretty much any reggaetón song, and you’ll hear that infectious percussion — dubbed the dembow rhythm — playing underneath. That single key element, a historian of the genre once wrote, “underpins the vast majority of reggaetón tracks as an almost required sonic signpost.”
There was nothing controversial about that fact until 2021, when lawyers for the Jamaican duo Steely & Clevie — Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and the estate of the late Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson — filed a copyright lawsuit over the origins of dembow. In it, they argued that the rhythm was ultimately derived from a single song, called “Fish Market,” that the pair wrote in 1989.
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When it was first filed, the lawsuit targeted only two tracks and a few artists. But the implication was clear: if their argument was valid, hundreds of artists across reggaetón — a genre that has risen from an underground fusion of rap, dancehall and reggae in the clubs of San Juan, Puerto, Rico, to the very apex of the music industry in the past decade — would also have infringed Steely & Clevie’s intellectual property.
Now, two years later, those stakes are no longer theoretical. The duo’s lawyers are suing more than 150 different artists, including Bad Bunny, Karol G, Pitbull, Drake, Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber, plus units of all three major music companies. They claim that over 1,800 reggaetón songs featuring iterations of the dembow rhythm were, at root, illegally copied from “Fish Market” — and that their clients deserve monetary compensation for them.
If that sounds both unusual and potentially disruptive to you, music law experts would agree.
“This case is jaw-dropping — the plaintiffs are suing over a hundred artists for over a thousand songs, 30 years after the release of their song,” says Jennifer Jenkins, a professor at Duke University School of Law who has written a history of musical borrowing and regulation. “If they win, this would confer a monopoly over an entire genre, something unprecedented in music copyright litigation.”
Musical pioneers
Legal claims aside, nobody really disputes that the genealogy of dembow leads back to Steely & Clevie, a legendary duo who are widely credited with playing an influential role in the evolution of Jamaican music. When Steely died in 2009, The New York Times said he had perhaps “participated in more sessions than anyone else in the history of reggae.”
According to most experts, the story goes like this: Aspects of Steely & Clevie’s “Fish Market” were incorporated into a 1990 song called “Dem Bow” by the artist Shabba Ranks, which itself was then re-used by producer Dennis “The Menace” Thompson in another 1990 song called “Dub Mix II.” It was this track that was then heavily sampled and interpolated in the early days of reggaetón, providing an essential rhythmic element to the nascent genre. According to an article by Wayne Marshall, a historian of Caribbean music and a professor at Berklee College of Music, that portion from “Dub Mix II” has since “provided the basis for hundreds if not thousands of other tracks.”
Over the decades that followed, reggaetón blossomed into a global sensation. With roots in the Panamanian “reggae en espanol” movement and then evolving with Puerto Rican trailblazers like Ivy Queen and DJ Nelson, reggaetón exploded onto the world stage with Daddy Yankee’s 2004 breakout single, “Gasolina,” which spent 20 weeks on the Hot 100. The genre then rose to new heights in 2017 with Luis Fonsi’s mega-hit “Despacito,” which topped the Hot 100 for a record-tying 16 weeks. And last year, Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti became the first Latin album to finish as the No. 1 Billboard 200 album of the year after ruling the chart for 13 nonconsecutive weeks. According to Billboard Boxscore, he also grossed a record-setting $435 million across two tours — El Último Tour del Mundo and World’s Hottest Tour — cementing his place as one of pop’s biggest stars.
All of it, according to Steely & Clevie’s lawsuit, on the backs of their intellectual property.
A growing case
The duo first headed to federal court April 2021, accusing Panamanian reggaetón artist and producer El Chombo of infringing “Fish Market” with his “Dame tu Cosita,” a 2018 hit that reached No. 36 on the Hot 100. The suit also named Karol G and Pitbull, who later released a remix of the track.
In their complaint, the lawyers for Steely & Clevie said the “primary rhythm and drum sections” of “Dame tu Cosita” were pulled directly from the earlier song: “At no point did defendants seek or obtain authorization from plaintiffs to use ‘Fish Market’ in connection with the infringing works.”
When the case was first filed, few people took notice. But the lawsuit quickly grew. In October 2021, Steely & Clevie added 10 more songs to the case, including Fonsi’s “Despacito.” In May 2022, they alleged that an additional 44 songs had infringed “Fish Market,” including Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina.” By September 2022, the lawsuit had ballooned: More than 150 total defendant-artists, including Bad Bunny, accused of releasing a staggering 1,800 infringing songs.
The newer versions of the lawsuit also claimed broader intellectual property rights. In the original, Steely & Clevie claimed only to own a copyright to “Fish Market” itself; as the case evolved, they claimed they also owned rights to “Dem Bow” and “Dub Mix II,” the later songs that utilized “Fish Market.”
In the most recent version of the complaint, filed in April, it takes a full 25 pages to list out all of the defendants, which also include units of Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Other notable defendants include Anitta, Becky G, Maluma, Tainy, Rauw Alejandro, and Enrique Iglesias, as well as companies BMG Rights Management, Hipgnosis and Kobalt.
Over a whopping 228 pages, the document lays out how each song, like “Despacito,” allegedly infringed what it calls “groundbreaking” drum and bass patterns in the earlier songs.
“The rhythm section of ‘Despacito’ and the ‘Despacito Remix’ copies original elements of the ‘Fish Market’ rhythm section,” Steely & Clevie’s lawyers wrote. “The musical backbones of ‘Despacito’ and the ‘Despacito Remix’ are substantially similar, if not virtually identical, to ‘Fish Market.’”
“Monopolistic”? Or “sensationalist”?
A trial on all those allegations is still years away, even in the fastest scenario. But this past summer, the attorneys representing the artists and labels have been trying to make sure it never gets there.
In a motion filed in June, Bad Bunny’s lawyer Kenneth D. Freundlich demanded that the case be dismissed immediately, calling it a “transparent” attempt by Steely & Clevie to “stake monopolistic control over the reggaetón genre.”
“Plaintiffs’ [lawsuit] impermissibly seeks to monopolize practically the entire reggaetón musical genre for themselves by claiming copyright ownership of certain legally irrelevant and/or unprotectable, purported musical composition elements,” Freundlich wrote for his superstar client.
When the lawsuit’s allegations are “defrocked” of their “façade,” Bad Bunny’s lawyer wrote, all that is left is a simple rhythm itself — and “courts have been consistent in finding rhythm to be unprotectable.”
The majority of the other defendants named in Steely & Clevie’s lawsuit (including Anitta, Pitbull, Karol G, Ricky Martin, Daddy Yankee, Fonsi, Bieber, units of all three majors and more than 70 other defendants) are represented by a single team of lawyers from the law firm Pryor Cashman. That’s the same firm, and some of the same lawyers, that won Ed Sheeran’s big copyright trial in May.
In their motion, the Pryor lawyers echoed Bad Bunny’s genre-monopoly arguments, but they also claimed that the size of the case had turned it into a procedural disaster — a confusing mess in which nobody knows exactly what they’re accused of doing wrong. They said Steely & Clevie had failed to satisfy “the fundamental elements of a copyright infringement claim.”
“The [complaint] is a ‘shotgun pleading’ filled with conclusory allegations that lump defendants together, making it impossible for defendants to determine what each is alleged to have done, what works are at issue and what in those works is allegedly infringing,” the attorneys wrote.
In their own response filings, Steely & Clevie remained undeterred. In an August filing, they argued that the gripes about the size and complexity of the case were unfounded — and that the scale of the lawsuit actually underscored the central point of their allegations.
“While the copyists are legion here, they certainly did copy, and the sheer amount of copying proves the creative and original nature of plaintiffs’ work,” wrote the duo’s lawyers from the Los Angeles-based law firm Doniger/Burroughs. “Defendants want to exploit plaintiffs’ creativity to build careers and reap financial success while denying plaintiffs their just credit and compensation.”
And in a separate response to Bad Bunny’s filing, Steely & Clevie’s attorneys blasted the accusation that they were aiming to own an entire genre of music.
“In the end, Bad Bunny’s motion boils down to a sensationalist, unsupported suggestion that this case somehow ties up the reggaetón genre. Not so,” the duo’s lawyers wrote. “To be sure, the unauthorized copying of the Fish Market pattern now is widespread — copying that necessitated this case. But Bad Bunny cites no authority for the proposition that widespread copying of an original work somehow renders that work unprotectable.”
A hearing before a federal judge, where those arguments will be tested in open court, is set for Friday. Attorneys for both sides declined to comment.
“A pretty wild claim”
With just about every artist in one of the industry’s hottest genres now facing the possibility of copyright liability over a core part of their music, Steely & Clevie’s case could pose something of an existential problem for reggaetón. Artists who want to make songs in the future featuring a similar rhythm would need to ask (and pay for) permission to do so for decades to come — that is, if the case is ultimately successful.
Some copyright experts are skeptical. “This is a case that zeros in on a particular beat that characterizes an entire genre, and they’re basically saying, you can trace it all back to our song, and a piece of everything that flows from that belongs to us,” says Peter DiCola, a professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law who has written extensively about music sampling. “I think that’s a pretty wild claim.”
Part of what makes the “Fish Market” case unusual is the long delay. Steely & Clevie waited 30 years to sue, as an entire world of music built up around a rhythm that they now claim to own — no doubt leading some reggaetón artists to think, perhaps reasonably, that dembow was fair game.
But even if that delay seems vaguely unfair, it’s probably not a great defense. In a 2014 case over the movie Raging Bull, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there are essentially no time limits to bringing a copyright suit. That decision directly sparked a battle over Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” decades after it was released, as well as many other lawsuits over years-old allegations of infringement.
Instead, the harder questions posed by Steely & Clevie’s case concern the dividing line between historical acknowledgment and exclusive legal ownership. Music historians don’t doubt that Steely & Clevie played a key role in reggaetón’s evolution, but does that entitle them, decades later, to control a crucial part of an entire genre? Put another way, the real question — and it’s potentially a multi-billion-dollar question — is whether they can claim a copyright on the dembow rhythm.
In the abstract, sure. Rhythms are just collections of sounds arranged creatively, like the melodies and lyrics that are clearly covered by copyrights. But in reality, U.S. courts have been hesitant to extend protection to musical elements like rhythms, chord progressions and song structures. Earlier cases have declared them either simply too unoriginal for copyright coverage, or ruled they are “scènes à faire” — a copyright law term for stock elements of a given genre that anyone is entitled to use.
Recent legal battles over music have been dismissed with rulings that the accuser could not claim a monopoly on basic “building blocks” of songs. Led Zeppelin won a case involving “Stairway to Heaven” in 2020, followed by a similar decision in 2022 on Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse.” In May, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that accused Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” of infringing Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” saying the case — over a chord progression and harmonic rhythm – was seeking an “impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block.”
Legal experts wonder if the claims about dembow may face similar limitations.
“All credit to them for being really talented musicians,” DiCola says. “But this thing that they’ve created, this common element that runs through as kind of the DNA of these reggaetón tracks — is that really something anyone can own? To me, it seems very much like a basic building block.”