Bringing reggaeton from the underground to the mainstream, Daddy Yankee has been one of the most influential voices of the genre since the early 2000s. He did more than anyone to establish reggaeton as a marketable music style with his 2004 mainstream breakthrough Barrio Fino — and in particular, the international hit single “Gasolina” — transcending cultural boundaries to become an international superstar. Daddy Yankee broke records during his initial run, becoming the top-selling Latin artist of the 2000s while remaining independent of major-label control. His empire expanded past music as time went on, growing to include a syndicated show for ABC Radio Networks (Daddy Yankee on Fuego) and a feature film for Paramount Pictures (Talento de Barrio). He stayed active between more fully realized studio albums like 2012’s Prestige with assorted singles, and other projects including the King Daddy mixtape in collaboration with production/urbano duo, Los De La Nazza (Eliezer “Musicólogo” García and Eduardo “Menes” López). He began recording its sequel in 2014. Tentatively titled King Daddy II: Elemento DY, he changed it to El Disco Duro. Originally slated for a 2016 release, it was delayed several times. In 2017, he was featured on Luis Fonsi’s global smash “Despacito”; it topped the charts in 47 countries. Yankee released a handful of charting singles in 2021 including “Problema” and “El Gran Robo, Pt. 2.” He closed a ten-year gap between albums with LegenDaddy in 2022.
Born Ramón Ayala (aka Raymond) on February 3, 1977 in Río Piedras, the largest district of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Daddy Yankee grew up in a musical family. His father was a bongosero (a salsa percussionist); his mother’s family included numerous musicians, and he himself sang from an early age and had a knack for improvisation. As Yankee grew older, he took an interest in Spanish-language hip-hop, especially the socially aware raps of Vico C, and he became increasingly drawn into the street life of his neighborhood, the Villa Kennedy housing project in San Juan. The “Yankee” moniker arose from the Puerto Rican slang for “someone tall, who is big in what he does” (according to a 2005 interview with Billboard).
Daddy Yankee got into reggaeton just as it was taking shape in the early ’90s, when San Juan DJs would spin hip-hop alongside dancehall reggae while vocalists freestyled over the beats. This convergence of hip-hop, dancehall, and freestyling proved popular in San Juan, most notably at The Noise, a long-running club night that spawned a collective of DJs and rappers. Besides The Noise, the other key proprietor of proto-reggaeton was Playero, a mixtape DJ/producer with whom Yankee got his start when he debuted as a featured guest on Playero 37 (1992). A few years later, at age 18, he made his full-length album debut, No Mercy (1995), again working with Playero. Little came of No Mercy, however, and he continued to work the reggaeton underground for the remainder of the ’90s. Toward the end of the decade, he began performing alongside Nicky Jam as a duo and had one of his songs, “Posición,” a collaboration with Alberto Stylee, featured on the 1998 One Tough Cop soundtrack.