Post by dawyked on Jan 6, 2006 1:30:01 GMT 1
By Agustin Gurza, Los Angeles Times | January 4, 2006
HOLLYWOOD -- Puerto Rico's Tego Calderon appeared to be doing his best recently during a tour swing through Southern California to live up to his reputation as the rebellious rapper of reggaeton. He did so by snubbing the press -- as if he didn't care in the least about participating in publicity efforts or countering speculation that a three-year lapse since his latest album of new material signals a career in decline.
o it was almost anticlimactic when a reporter arrived for a scheduled interview the next day and the rapper unceremoniously answered the door of his modest airport hotel suite.
The champion of the underdog eased his slight frame into an armchair for a 45-minute interview that revealed a thoughtful, articulate, and likable artist with deeply held principles informing his often challenging, sometimes angry music.
Asked about his reputation for being difficult, the 34-year-old singer with the bushy Afro and the gap-toothed smile answered with a hoarse laugh.
''A lot of people have created that image around me mostly because of my style of conducting business and my way of defending what's mine, who I am, and what I believe," he said in Spanish with a thick Puerto Rican accent. ''I say whatever I want to say, and I don't go by the normal rules of business. But if you respect me, I respect you."
He's gotten respect from English-speaking hip-hop acts, having done guest stints on tracks by 50 Cent and Wyclef Jean and on a remix of Fat Joe's ''Lean Back."
But the singer's insistence on doing things his way has come at a price.
He has turned down multimillion-dollar offers to sign with a major label in order to keep control of his music on his own imprint, Jiggiri Records, distributed worldwide by Atlantic. (His next studio album is due in the spring.) And earlier this year, he publicly rejected an offer to appear in ads for rapper P. Diddy's clothing line, Sean John, because of reports that the firm has used Central American sweatshops.
From the start, Calderon has played the part of the reluctant celebrity. With his roots in late '80s Latino hip-hop, he didn't even like reggaeton when it first appeared on the Puerto Rican underground scene in the 1990s.
''At the beginning, there was too much caryaqueo in reggaeton," he said, using a Spanglish slang word for carjacking. ''They just stole songs from the Jamaicans. And I couldn't respect that because there was no creativity in it."
He didn't like it, that is, until he tried dancing it. He got hooked at a club named Hollywood in Old San Juan.
''The dance just captivated me; it's so sensual," he said, referring to the music's provocative move called el perreo, or doggie dance. ''I danced the whole night and thought, 'No wonder this is so popular. I gotta do reggaeton.' "
His first reggaeton song was aptly called ''Cosa Buena" (Good Thing), from 2001.
Calderon's music has appeared on numerous compilations, but he has released only one studio album in his 15-year career, 2003's ''El Abayarde," a title taken from his nickname, a term used in Puerto Rico to identify particularly mischievous kids.
Produced by Elias de Leon, ''Abayarde" yielded several hits in reggaeton's standard party mold, such as ''Pa' Que Retozen," ''Guasa, Guasa," and ''Dominicana." But it's critically admired for its unusual use of authentic Afro-Borinquen rhythms and its challenging themes.
The album contains what Calderon considers the best song he's ever written, ''Loiza." Named after his hometown, a predominantly black enclave outside San Juan, the song uses distinctive Puerto Rican rhythms to underscore its searing indictment of the town's ''shameful history" of racism as a black ghetto for the descendants of African slaves.
The song is meant to denounce the status of blacks as ''second-class Latinos," Calderon says, an issue that is rarely discussed openly in Latin America. Even his fellow Afro-Latinos don't want to hear about it, the songwriter says.
''It's my most profound song, but it's not the public's favorite," he says with a tone of resignation. ''Young people are just not interested. I don't even think they understand what I'm talking about. They just want to dance and be content. That's the problem with blacks in our countries. We're immune to being mistreated."
;D
HOLLYWOOD -- Puerto Rico's Tego Calderon appeared to be doing his best recently during a tour swing through Southern California to live up to his reputation as the rebellious rapper of reggaeton. He did so by snubbing the press -- as if he didn't care in the least about participating in publicity efforts or countering speculation that a three-year lapse since his latest album of new material signals a career in decline.
o it was almost anticlimactic when a reporter arrived for a scheduled interview the next day and the rapper unceremoniously answered the door of his modest airport hotel suite.
The champion of the underdog eased his slight frame into an armchair for a 45-minute interview that revealed a thoughtful, articulate, and likable artist with deeply held principles informing his often challenging, sometimes angry music.
Asked about his reputation for being difficult, the 34-year-old singer with the bushy Afro and the gap-toothed smile answered with a hoarse laugh.
''A lot of people have created that image around me mostly because of my style of conducting business and my way of defending what's mine, who I am, and what I believe," he said in Spanish with a thick Puerto Rican accent. ''I say whatever I want to say, and I don't go by the normal rules of business. But if you respect me, I respect you."
He's gotten respect from English-speaking hip-hop acts, having done guest stints on tracks by 50 Cent and Wyclef Jean and on a remix of Fat Joe's ''Lean Back."
But the singer's insistence on doing things his way has come at a price.
He has turned down multimillion-dollar offers to sign with a major label in order to keep control of his music on his own imprint, Jiggiri Records, distributed worldwide by Atlantic. (His next studio album is due in the spring.) And earlier this year, he publicly rejected an offer to appear in ads for rapper P. Diddy's clothing line, Sean John, because of reports that the firm has used Central American sweatshops.
From the start, Calderon has played the part of the reluctant celebrity. With his roots in late '80s Latino hip-hop, he didn't even like reggaeton when it first appeared on the Puerto Rican underground scene in the 1990s.
''At the beginning, there was too much caryaqueo in reggaeton," he said, using a Spanglish slang word for carjacking. ''They just stole songs from the Jamaicans. And I couldn't respect that because there was no creativity in it."
He didn't like it, that is, until he tried dancing it. He got hooked at a club named Hollywood in Old San Juan.
''The dance just captivated me; it's so sensual," he said, referring to the music's provocative move called el perreo, or doggie dance. ''I danced the whole night and thought, 'No wonder this is so popular. I gotta do reggaeton.' "
His first reggaeton song was aptly called ''Cosa Buena" (Good Thing), from 2001.
Calderon's music has appeared on numerous compilations, but he has released only one studio album in his 15-year career, 2003's ''El Abayarde," a title taken from his nickname, a term used in Puerto Rico to identify particularly mischievous kids.
Produced by Elias de Leon, ''Abayarde" yielded several hits in reggaeton's standard party mold, such as ''Pa' Que Retozen," ''Guasa, Guasa," and ''Dominicana." But it's critically admired for its unusual use of authentic Afro-Borinquen rhythms and its challenging themes.
The album contains what Calderon considers the best song he's ever written, ''Loiza." Named after his hometown, a predominantly black enclave outside San Juan, the song uses distinctive Puerto Rican rhythms to underscore its searing indictment of the town's ''shameful history" of racism as a black ghetto for the descendants of African slaves.
The song is meant to denounce the status of blacks as ''second-class Latinos," Calderon says, an issue that is rarely discussed openly in Latin America. Even his fellow Afro-Latinos don't want to hear about it, the songwriter says.
''It's my most profound song, but it's not the public's favorite," he says with a tone of resignation. ''Young people are just not interested. I don't even think they understand what I'm talking about. They just want to dance and be content. That's the problem with blacks in our countries. We're immune to being mistreated."
;D