Rolling Stone Menu 500 Greatest Albums Podcast: Daddy Yankee’s ‘Barrio Fino’ and the Rise of Reggaeton
In the newest episode of our Amazon Music series, we look at the Puerto Rican superstar’s 2004 album – and how it helped turn an underground urban movement from Puerto Rico into a worldwide phenomenon
By Chad Rachman/AP
In the mid-2000s, Daddy Yankee was a married father of three living in the Villa Kennedy public housing projects in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was about to change the world, though, with an album that did perhaps more than any other to turn reggaeton an underground urban movement out of Puerto Rico that drew on influences like Jamaican dancehall, Panamanian reggae en español and hip-hop into a global force that today fuels the careers of superstars like Bad Bunny and Ozuna.