1	Hitting it out of the park Ten Major League Baseball teams earn major points with their Latino fans. read more...
2	in it to win it New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson speaks out on his campaign for the 2008 presidency and his bid for space on the already tight Democratic ticket.. read more...
3	Not so lonely anymore From San Angelo, Texas to nationwide fame, the three Garza brothers, better known as Los Lonely Boys, can count the famous and infamous among their friends. read more...
4	top of the pops These hot Latin pop, rock en Español, crossover, singer-songwriter, and some indescribable new acts are a must for your iPod. read more...
5	New chicos on the block The Puerto Rican super duo Calle 13 have moved out of the barrio and onto the international music scene. read more...
6	they’re Grrrrrreat! With their songs based on the trials and tribulations of the immigrant struggle, Los Tigres del Norte have become living musical legends. read more...

THE ALTERNATIVE

After winning three Latin Grammys, Puerto Rico’s Calle 13—the duo who have stretched the limits of reggaeton—are poised to clarify their identity with the release of their second album.

When music artists Calle 13 show up for a quiet South Beach lunch, it is apparent that anonymity is, for them, a fading luxury. Since winning Latin Grammys for Best New Artist, Best Urban Album, and Best Short Version Video for their hit Atrevete-te-Te!, the Puerto Rican outfit has been on an accelerated promotion schedule pumping up their image as they prepare for the release of their second album at the end of this month.
For René “Residente” Pérez—the front man and lyricist, and Eduardo “Visitante” Cabra—the mastermind behind the duo’s grooves—the pleasures of solitude and free time are growing increasingly scarce.
“We’re still the same, but everything else around us has changed,” says Residente after seeking out the most remote corner of the restaurant.
When Hispanic Magazine meets them, the pair is fresh from a hastily prepared press junket in Chile, followed by a South Florida photo shoot, and they have the weary look of pets that have been stroked to the point of irritation. Dressed casually in designer T-shirts and jeans, they slouch and droop into their seats at the faux marble-topped dinner table, the day’s makeup session now baked oppressively onto their faces.
While they alternately and patiently indulge the barrage of questions, most of which they’ve heard before, it is only talk of their soon-to-be-released sophomore effort that genuinely animates them. Ask them about what it was like to collaborate with Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla, for example, on one tango-tronic track on the upcoming CD and the pair rapidly exude “flow,” that mythic and generative potency thought to fuel the imagination and verbal finesse of reggaetón artists.
Ask them about their multi-Grammy winning CD, however, and the subject grows evidently, and understandably, old. They shrink back into the vacuum of their chairs like drowsy, pensive cats, Visitante wearing a beret, chin resting on a curled left fist, Residente slumping even further into his corner, offering a side view of the curlicue squiggles shaved onto his head. Like true artists, they are already on to the next thing.
“The new songs offer a chance to really take off musically for the live show. We’re now free to stretch out during jams and it’s very exciting,” offers Visitante.
Calle 13’s emergence on the music scene has been sudden and explosive. Discovered almost overnight after submitting a demo to independent label White Lion, the group went from underground to mainstream Grammy winners at a blinding clip. The group’s decision to borrow elements of reggaetón, without being subsumed by it, has led to some confusion, however. And Residente’s true-to-form underground irreverence at the Latin Grammys—shouting in Spanish, “I’m so happy I feel like taking a piss”—left some of the Hispanic media—and many prime Puerto Ricans—scandalized. “This, from the boyfriend of Denise Quiñones, Miss Universe?” they seemed to sneer collectively. There remains, also, the lingering criticism that Calle 13 are not authentically reggaetón, being too subtly suburban, as opposed to aggressively urban.
But spend even a short time talking with half-brothers René and Eduardo and you quickly learn that both criticisms are baseless. The “needing to piss,” is actually a repeated lyrical theme on the debut release and is far more a part of the album’s rhythmically hypnotic, and impishly whimsical attack on the imagined listeners’ egos and pretensions, than any intent to be vulgar.
Also, the pair, to be sure, never intended to be reggaetón artists. “I never really liked reggaetón when I heard it. It was very limited. Great to dance to, but to sing to it, could get boring,” Residente says. “But then we thought, well, let’s play with this thing. Let’s see if we can push against reggaetón’s limits, and that’s when it got to be a lot of fun and interesting.”
“But we’re not playing just reggaetón,” adds Visitante. “We’ve always had the tendency to mix many different styles of music: funk, Brazilian, whatever, and now with the new record, tango.”
We use elements of reggaetón,” says Residente, “but we also get far away from it. And on the new CD, we get even farther away.”
Which begs the question: What kind of music is Calle 13 playing? Is it pop, urban, Latin hip-hop, a mix, or something altogether different? Ask them who their musical heroes are, and you begin to find the answer.
“I can tell you three artists that are important to me right away,” says Residente, once again animated: “Bjork, because her presentation is so powerful, it’s almost like she doesn’t even have to sing. She’s as amazing visually and in terms of her presence, as she is vocally; Rubén Blades, because of the trajectory of his career, how he did so much with salsa, that what he was playing in the end couldn’t even be called salsa anymore, and also for the way he could be saying something really heavy, but have all the people dancing to it and loving it and not bored; and Madonna for how she embraced the homosexual community, how she challenged sexual taboos with her music, and how she continued to reinvent herself to this day.”
“Me?” asks Visitante, looking up from his beret. “I’ve said it 50,000 times, but I’ll say it again: I really admire Gustavo Santaolalla. The guy’s amazing. He can be in the middle of working on a movie score, for example, and still be out there enough to get mixed up with us.”
“What we are really playing is closer to alternative music,” Residente says. “Latinos are just starting to step into that area of music and filling it out. For example, you have artists who rap, but are playing rock, and so the lyrics, the approach, are totally different, than traditional rap music.”
How far Calle 13 are willing to drift from the viscerally satisfying, but at times monotonously repetitive reggaetón beat, as they follow in the path of their musical influences—all of which are known for defying categorization, as well as the sort of extreme versatility that becomes reinvention—will only be known with the release of their new CD. If the new track La Crema, from that CD, and now available on their website, is any example, we are in for more sudden and satisfying surprises.
It is hard to imagine Calle 13 producing a more robustly lyrical and rhythmically engaging CD than the seamless mix of words and jams they’ve already created, and this even as they worked within reggaetón’s constraints. But the pair is promising just that, and the new CD is out this month.