#473: Daddy Yankee, ‘Barrio Fino’

V.I. Music, 2004

I love American hip-hop, Jamaican reggae and Latin Caribbean music. I love Reggaeton which means I love Daddy Yankee. 

If I ever get the chance to leave my house again after this pandemic, I will say no. I am going to stay home so I can dance alone in my room to this album. Every song is a banger. I wish I had known how good it was in 2004 when I was a fresh twelve-year-old trying so hard to like cool music.

Daddy Yankee is credited as coining the name “reggaeton” in 1994 while also crossing Latin music over into the American Billboard pop charts.

Daddy Yankee, born Ramon Ayala, was planning on being a baseball player. When he was 17 years old, he was shot in the leg with a rogue bullet. The bullet in his leg was never removed and it took about a year and a half to recover, effectively decimating his baseball goals. He was left focusing on music seriously. 

Daddy Yankee’s story is of submission but not of resignation. His primary plan to be a baseball player for the Seattle Mariners did not work out. Instead of resigning himself to a life off the field and into mediocrity, he submitted to his new situation and threw himself into music. 

I have been thinking a lot about the difference between resignation and submission. This is what I’ve worked out: 

Resignation looks like someone reaching the top of a mountain only to realize it is a false summit. Instead of looking up and moving forward, resignation is about slumping over in devastation until a mountain sheep headbutts the hiker until they roll down the mountain, arms folded like a corpse. 

Submission is about choice and ownership. It’s that person looking up and choosing to either keep hiking up or choosing to walk back down. With this ownership of choice, there is also accountability. No rolling down the hill, with arms folded in front of the chest and eyes semi-closed. 

Submission is the foundational doctrine in most faith traditions. The word, “Muslim” means “submission.” Buddhism is all about finding peace within the messiness and submitting ourselves to the winds of both fortune and misfortune, welcoming all of it. Christianity centers the submission of Jesus to the cross as the great act that saves humanity. 

With submission, there is still power. Daddy Yankee would have probably been great at whatever he was doing but he didn’t waste any time resigning himself to his lot. He submitted himself to his new circumstance and became the king of Reggaeton and brought us all the song, “Gasolina.” 

This is a recurring theme for a lot of the artists on this list. Many of them had to pivot to music because Plan A didn't work out. They could have resigned themselves to failure and settled for something less but they were submissive to the necessary changes and they were willing to pivot. 

As the pandemic keeps rolling on and new economic challenges keep popping up, resigning ourselves is not helpful. Being humbly submissive, willing to learn from the ebbs and flows and also able to change with those changes is the essence of greatness and innovation.