Daddy Yankee Biography, Songs, & Albums |

Daddy Yankee is a Puerto Rican reggaeton artist who found fame in Latin America and the US. He has been releasing music since 2006, with his most recent album Géminis being released in 2018.

“Daddy Yankee Biography, Songs, & Albums” is a blog about the life of Daddy Yankee. It includes information on his songs and albums. Read more in detail here: daddy yankee songs.

Daddy Yankee accomplished more than anybody else in the early twenty-first century to create reggaeton as a commercially viable music genre. Yankee’s popularity was so spectacular after his mainstream breakthrough Barrio Fino in 2004 — and especially the worldwide smash song “Gasolina” — that he transcended cultural borders and genre trappings. By the time his follow-up album, El Cartel: The Big Boss, was released in 2007, he had turned himself into more than simply a reggaetoero, having transformed himself into a worldwide name brand. Daddy Yankee’s name, image, and songs were utilized to promote Pepsi and Reebok soft drinks, as well as a syndicated program (Daddy Yankee on Fuego) for ABC Radio Networks and a feature film for Paramount Pictures (Talento de Barrio). Daddy Yankee had built a financial empire, but his most valuable commodity — his music — remained free of major-label control: he ran his own independent label, El Cartel Records, and preferred to collaborate with companies like Interscope solely for marketing and distribution. Barrio Fino stands tall as the defining reggaeton album of its period, despite Daddy Yankee’s business side threatening to eclipse his music. The album was a standard-bearer, inspiring an army of fans and establishing the production team Luny Tunes as reggaeton’s biggest hitmakers, thanks to two great singles, “Gasolina” and “Lo Que Pasó, Pasó.” Barrio Fino was also the first reggaeton album to debut at number one on the Billboard Top Latin Albums list, where it remained for almost a year after selling over a million copies in the United States alone.

Daddy Yankee was born Ramón Ayala (aka Raymond) on February 3, 1977, in Ro Piedras, Puerto Rico’s biggest district. He grew up in a musical household. His father was a bongosero (a salsa percussionist), his mother came from a musical family, and he sang from a young age and had a flair for improvisation. Yankee got more interested in Spanish-language hip-hop as he grew older, particularly Vico C’s socially conscious raps, and he became more immersed in the street culture of his area, the Villa Kennedy housing project in San Juan. The term “Yankee” comes from a Puerto Rican slang term that means “someone tall, who is large in what he does” (according to a 2005 interview with Billboard magazine).

Daddy Yankee got into reggaeton in the early 1990s, when DJs in San Juan were playing hip-hop alongside dancehall reggae and singers were freestyling over the rhythms. The Noise, a long-running club night that created a collective of DJs and rappers, was a hotbed of this fusion of hip-hop, dancehall, and freestyle in San Juan. Aside from The Noise, Playero, a mixtape DJ/producer with whom Yankee debuted as a featured guest on Playero 37, was another important figure in proto-reggaeton (1992). He released his first full-length album, No Mercy (1995), when he was 18 years old, again collaborating with Playero. No Mercy, on the other hand, had little success, and he spent the rest of the 1990s working in the reggaeton underground. He formed a duet with Nicky Jam at the end of the decade, and one of his songs, “Posición,” a collaboration with Alberto Stylee, was included on the 1998 One Tough Cop album.

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Daddy Yankee’s popularity was greatly boosted by independently released records beginning in 2000. The first two albums, El Cartel (2000) and El Cartel, Vol. 2 (2001), were mixtape-style albums with featured guests; however, El Cangri.com (2002) was the one that gave his career the push it required to break him outside of Puerto Rico. Despite having no major-label support, El Cangri.com went all the way to number 43 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums list, thanks to the song “Latigazo,” which received radio in Miami and New York (released instead by VI Music, a Puerto Rican indie). Following this success, Daddy Yankee put out Los Homerun-es (2003), a Top Ten album that included a freshly recorded smash song, “Segurosqui,” as well as some old Playero tunes from a decade before.

At this moment, reggaeton was on the verge of breaking big; classic albums like Don Omar’s The Last Don (2003), Tego Calderón’s El Abayarde (2003), and Luny Tunes’ Mas Flow (2003), as well as a slew of lesser albums, were gaining traction in Miami and New York, in addition to Puerto Rico. Barrio Fino (2004), Daddy Yankee’s mainstream breakthrough, was released in July 2004 (via VI Music) and debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Latin Albums list. Barrio Fino, the first reggaeton album to hit number one, would stay at the top of the Latin albums chart for almost a year, staying there far into 2005. During its chart run, it sold over a million copies in the United States alone.

Barrio Fino’s extended shelf life was due in part to “Gasolina,” a party-oriented hit with such widespread appeal that it became (and possibly still is) synonymous with reggaeton in the eyes of many, particularly English speakers unfamiliar with the music style. “Gasolina” was so popular that it was likened to “Macarena,” another Latin party song that crossed cultural borders to become a dance club standard across the world. It took a while for “Gasolina” to become a fad, many months after Barrio Fino’s debut, but by November 2004, it had cracked the Billboard Hot 100 and had climbed all the way to number 32 a few months later (a genuine Top 40 hit, albeit a novel one). “Gasolina” didn’t even make the Top Ten on the Latin charts, peaking at number 17 there. Rather, the album’s major success in Latin was “Lo Que Pasó, Pasó,” which charted at number two. “Sabor a Melao” (with salsa legend Andy Montaez), “No Me Dejes Solo” (featuring Wisin & Yandel), and “Like You” are among the other songs from Barrio Fino (an English-language song). Luny Tunes, an industrious pair who’d created half of the album and all of the major singles, rose to fame as reggaeton’s uncontested go-to hitmakers as a result of the album’s popularity.

The success of the album attracted Daddy Yankee’s attention from big labels. In March 2005, Machete Music, a Universal label specialized in Latin urban music, struck a contract with Yankee to re-release Los Homerun-es (and later Barrio Fino in December 2006). Meanwhile, VI Music reaped the benefits of its live CD/DVD Ahora le Toca al Cangri (2005), which was recorded in Puerto Rico in 2003. While the big labels courted Yankee in 2005, Jimmy Iovine, head of Interscope Records, whose roster featured Eminem, 50 Cent, and Dr. Dre, went down to Puerto Rico to talk business. Interscope and Daddy Yankee’s own label, El Cartel Records, formed a joint venture. Barrio Fino en Directo (2005), a CD/DVD including live in-concert and freshly recorded songs, was the first release under this collaboration. One of the freshly recorded tracks, “Rompe,” was released as the lead single and charted higher than “Gasolina,” peaking at number 24 on the Hot 100. It also lasted 15 weeks at the top of the Hot Latin Tracks list.

At this time, Daddy Yankee had signed a slew of deals, including one with Interscope. From footwear (Reebok) to soft drinks (Pepsi) to cars (Citroen) and radio, he started to attach his name, image, and music to everything (ABC). He also established his own charity, Corazón Guerrero, to assist ex-convicts, and joined up with CMN (Cardenas Marketing Network, an event marketing and sponsorship firm) to organize a worldwide tour through North, Central, and South America.

Mundial Throughout this time, he worked on his next album, El Cartel: The Big Boss (2007), a big-budget project that included an ensemble cast of star collaborators, including pop-rap hitmakers will.i.am, Akon, and Scott Storch. The album’s promotion was meticulously planned and executed, with “Impacto” (and its multilingual remix featuring Fergie) being released as the lead single far ahead of the expected June release date. The next year, Daddy Yankee featured in the film Talento de Barrio, which smashed box office records in Puerto Rico and helped boost sales of the film’s soundtrack, which Yankee performed alongside a number of special guests. Mundial, his 2010 album, included less hip-hop and pop and more Latin influences, as well as the smash song “Descontrol.” Prestige, his sixth album, was released in 2011 and included many hit songs, including “Ven Conmigo” and “Lovumba.”

When El Cartel house producers Musicologo & Menes launched their El Imperio Nazza series of cooperation albums in 2012, it was only inevitable that Daddy Yankee would make an appearance. He eventually stepped up a year later with King Daddy Edition, the eighth book in the series, which included Divino, Yandel, Farruko, Arcángel, and J Alvarez. He had two Top Ten Hot Latin singles in 2015 with “Sgueme y Te Sigo” and “Vaivén,” followed by “Shaky Shaky” in 2016, which was popularized by a social media app and a hypermarket commercial. However, it wasn’t until 2017 when Yankee’s duet with Luis Fonsi on the Justin Bieber-featuring single “Despacito” propelled him into the worldwide mainstream. The multi-platinum blockbuster hit song topped the charts in dozens of nations and tied a Billboard Hot 100 record for the longest consecutive number one spot.

Following the success of “Despacito,” Yankee released the song “Dura” in the start of 2018. A spate of songs followed that multi-platinum success, including 2019’s “Con Calma,” which included Canadian one-hit wonder Snow for an interpolation of his 1992 single “Informer.” Both the Hot Latin Songs and Latin Airplay charts were topped by the song. It was also nominated for a Latin Grammy for Best Urban Fusion/Performance.

Daddy Yankee is a Puerto Rican singer and songwriter. He has released 12 studio albums, including the chart-topping Daddy Yankee en Accion. He has also released 2 live albums, 1 compilation album, and 7 extended plays. His first album was called “Daddy Yankee” in 1995. Reference: daddy yankee parents.