3. The Noise

From Bronx Hip Hop to Puerto Rico's Underground Previously on Loud, it was an easy hit. That was a song, an English hit, and you go through it in Spanish. That was an easy hit. Speaker 2 I mean, hip hop started in the Bronx and it started in the ghetto and these projects in the hood and who lived in the hood was blacks and Puerto Ricans, you know? Speaker 3 When I come back to Puerto Rico, forget it. I was. Oh my God, I came. Speaker 1 From New York. Speaker 3 With the new music, say hey listen, this is the new. Speaker 4 Stuff the golf ball with the dawn of Spanish rap. Speaker 1 Puerto Rico. Speaker 5 San. Speaker 1 Juan, Puerto Rico, It's 1991. Speaker 5 On. Speaker 1 The edge of the old city. There's this little club. It got a huge line outside. The music is bumping inside. The place is dark, no lights at all. Cloudy with weed smoke, sweat dripping from the ceiling. The base is pumping flat tops on the guides, braids on the girls, baggaging some. Both the chica periando grinding their asses up against the guys hands on the floor. Yo, people are going wild. Honey, this is the noise. This club, the noise was something special was Studio 54 was to disco or the warehouse was to house. That's what the noise was for reggaeton. It's the club that gave birth to a sound from Spotify studios and for to those studios. I'm Evie Queen and this is loud. The History of Reggaeton Episode 3 The Noise So in the last episode we talk about two music icons, El Generale, who started the Spanish dance hall craze, and Bicosi who father a Spanish hip hop scene in Puerto Rico. In this episode we are going to take you to a club in Puerto Rico where these two energies came together and gave birth to a whole new music scene known as an underground. And we are going to hear about that beat that came to the final scene. You know what I'm talking about, Lambo. That beat, honey, that beat will dominate almost every song of reggaeton that you hear today. To tell the full story of this club de noise, we had to meet somebody special. Algen Aquen, Jo Quiero Mucho. Someone who I think of as my adopted musical father, a guy named DJ Negro. He's the Quincy Jones of reggaeton. Speaker 5 Everybody knew about DJ Negro. If you were not known DJ Negro by that time, you were nobody. Speaker 1 DJ Negro grew up in a very special place in Puerto Rico, La Pela. La Pela is the hood, but it's probably the most beautiful hood in all of Puerto Rico. You know what? Maybe the whole world. It's a bunch of colorful houses surrounded by this beautiful view of the awesome one and the sea. He points to the blue Atlantic Ocean on one side and the huge stone castle wall on the other. The Spanish built this wall just for us, he said. We met DJ Negro briefly last episode. He was the other half of Puerto Rico's hottest hip hop act with Because C. They were a duo, but in the year 1991 he was kicked out of the group. Negro went from being part of the hottest group of hip hop in Puerto Rico and living like a tool to being out of a job and he was dead broke. But Negro, he was born a hustler, honey. He had a full back plan. He started to sell hot dogs on the street. Here he is putting ketchup on the hot dog while the music is still playing all over the radio. And Puerto Rico people were surprised to see him. He'll let you take the picture, but you know you have to buy a hot dog first. And one day, while he was grilling the hot dogs, this idea came to him. What if I don't need to be in a group or wait for somebody to book me as a DJ? What if I have something on my own where I call the shots? What if I open a club? So he borrowed $4000 from his brother, who was a dealer in the neighborhood. It's not a secret. And he went and rented this old restaurant on a cobblestone street right next to the stairs that go down into La Perla Negro. Took one of our producers on a tour of the space. It's back to be in another restaurant now. It was pretty small, just one room with a bar and another with a dance floor. Space for maybe 80 to 100 people squeezed. Speaker 5 Together he got some. Speaker 1 Speakers put them on the ceiling and then all that was left was to come up with a name for the place. And he thought. Speaker 5 Young. Speaker 1 People are loud, they are noisy. And then he remembered this house on that was popular at that time. Speaker 5 Everybody in the house makes a noise. Speaker 1 And he thought, hey, that's it, I am going to call it the Noise. The club quickly became the spot to be for the kids from the Castelia and someone. Speaker 5 No Benia blanquitos. Speaker 1 Because it was right next to Lapella. The white kids didn't there to come. It was pure barrio. The club was, you know, someone on a little side street and even from the outside. Speaker 3 You feel the music and the beat at the door. It was like, honestly, it was the best experience that I have in my life. Teenager going to the club it was. Speaker 6 A black box in the beginning there was not even lights. I guess it was like, it was like really very DIY. Speaker 1 Black light. Speaker 5 Everything dark. I was talking to you. Your teeth were shining. Speaker 1 And your. Speaker 5 Eyes and all that. It was crazy. Speaker 6 The place wasn't even the thing, you know, It was the energy. It was about this new music that you could only go there and listen to. Speaker 1 The music was the latest stuff direct from New York City. We're talking 9192. So at first DJ Negro played mostly freestyles, house, hip hop, but more than anything reggae and dancehall, especially Anomanian dancehall. Speaker 2 The first reggae song that I heard was in the radio in Puerto Rico. It was. Speaker 1 This is Don Chesina, one of the first big artists in Puerto Rico. Speaker 2 And it was like when I heard that, I was like, Oh my God, who is this? Like he changed my perspective of music. Speaker 1 In reality, the gay Negros audience at the noise club wanted to listen to dancehall, so he thought he should bring some Panamanians into the club to do some shows. The Noise: Where MCs Battled for Respect But at the beginning, of course, he couldn't afford to fly them in. So instead Negro put out the call. If you can do rap and reggae, come to the noise and he will put you on stage and word spread like a cheese manal barrio. Here's don't you seen again. Speaker 2 One day I got out my house and I went to my friends and everybody was writing. I'm like, yo, what you doing guys? And oh, we, we writing lyrics, we're doing music, we're doing songs. I'm like what? And everyone like really excited and motivated and I was like, wow, so this is the new thing now. Speaker 1 Dozens of wannabe MCS started to show up to the club. Franklin Stone was one of those. Speaker 5 Kids he. Speaker 1 Remembers BJ Negro brought him on stage and before he performed, Negro tells the crowd, this guy wants to do a song. If you don't like him, throw drinks at him. That was the tactic. Franklin Stone is nervous. He's just 19, but he gets up there and. Speaker 5 Start to rap. Speaker 1 Luckily Frankie Stone was good because if you were bad, Negro will Boo you the fuck out of stage with a megaphone. He will be a real asshole. I knew that if I wanted to be anybody on the scene, I have to be on the stage too. And if I wanted respect there, I was going to have to win it on the mic. So the first time that I go up there to bottle this guy I'm going against started like making fun of how I look, trying to clown my Afro because I used to have a big Afro, split it in half and have to beautiful Afro puff. One thing to know about me, I'm a huge boxing fan and I know if you want to compete, you have to analyze the fighter you're going against, but I have an idea. You know that there's nothing that make a guy more insecure than when you talk about the size of his package. So I incorporated that and that that was my secret weapon. The crowd for Supuesto, they crack up and the guy I was battling with, he look at me mad, embarrassed. Since then everyone realized that they wouldn't fuck with me. There was no way if they knew I was going for them, that's it, it was over. Ask DJ Negro. This life improvisations became the main event at the Noise. Negro will put on popular Jamaican records for local kids to spit over. Back then the Jamaican records come with side A&B. Side 8 was the banger of the moment and the side B was the instrumental. So he will play the instrumental for the new kids to spit on it and we call that the rhythm. And at the same time, he will also mix a lot of hip hop instrumentals and he will be mixing back and forth and all those different beats while people were freestyling on stage. And that became the essence of this new sound that was happening at the Noise. It was part hip hop, part dance hall and all en espanol. But this new style, this mix of rap and dance hall, coming out of the Noise, people still weren't calling it reggaeton yet. Unpacking the Controversial Origins of the Dem Bow Beat They had a different name for it, El, on the ground. Speaker 5 The understanding of underground for us was not played in the radio, not acknowledged. But dope, you know what I mean? Speaker 1 This is Nico Canada, a producer from back then. Speaker 5 So like, for example, the Ramones are underground, Pink Floyd is commercial. That's what I mean. So we were like the Ramones. Speaker 1 Unlike the Ramones, there was something punk about it. This music was raw, unfiltered, straight up. We were young people rapping about whatever we wanted to sex. We the cops. Speaker 5 Marijuana Sexo. Speaker 1 I know him as Richie has this underground magazine called In the House, which was like a Puerto Rican version of the source. He says the lyrics back then were dirty. Speaker 5 Since. Speaker 1 On the ground music wasn't on the radio and wasn't being sold in the stores. To hear it, of course, you have to come to the noise. So for the people who went there, this music felt like a secret, something just for us, where us teenagers from the ghetto dance till sunrise. The magic of the noise was the freedom you felt through music. It was like the coolest party in the world. What made the noise and this new sound called On the Ground so special? It has a lot to do with one particular track, one rhythm that kept us grinding on the dance floor all night long. A beat that took over the club and would eventually take over the whole island. That's right, I'm talking OK, so take pretty much any reggaeton song, take out everything but the drums, and you're left with this beat. And that beat, that drum pattern is known as Dumbo. Today, there's Dominican Dumbo, but we are talking about the original meaning. As many of you know, the story of Dumbo begins with one specific song, a song by Jamaican dancehall artist Shabba Ranks. Call them Bow, made in 1990. And overtime, that beat from that one song transform into the basis for thousands and thousands of reggaeton songs to the point where it's become the sound of the genre. That's still the sound that people. Speaker 5 Can identify. Speaker 1 Them Bow is the center of it all, but the story behind the sample is not as straightforward as you think. So let's talk about that original Shabba Rang song. Them Bow. Well, Them Bow is Jamaican patois for. Speaker 4 Them bow. Speaker 1 El Tumbo, the Panamanian DJ and producer, is going to help us break down what the song means. Speaker 4 First of all, it's like a song of them bow to white men bow like in the action when in presence of a king or any royalty like figure them bow. Speaker 1 So the song in part, it's about black pride in Jamaica and not bowing down to the colonizers, but also is an anti-gay song. Speaker 4 Back in the day, Jamaica was very homophobic and the other part of it is them Bo like when gay dudes, you know, they them Bo to have like oral sex and stuff like that. Speaker 1 In dancehall, unfortunately there's a lot of songs with homophobic lyrics. Some of the artists, including Shabba, have apologized for the lyrics and there's a lot less Santigue stuff in the music today. But homophobia is still a big problem in Jamaica and of course in Latin America too. In this song, Chava is talking shit about men who have sex with men and actually just anybody, man or woman, who vowed to have over sex with anyone. But there's another twist in the story behind the bow. The actual sample that was used many, many times in reggaeton isn't the one that people think it is. It doesn't come from the Chava Rang song, but from a copy of it. The real sample wasn't produced in Jamaica, but in a studio in the suburb of Long Island, New York called HCNF. All the big Jamaican artists record there back in the day. Speaker 7 It was an official studio. It was an established establishment. Speaker 1 This is Sleeping Wonder, a dance hall artist working in New York in the 90s, and he was in the studio on the day that the actual sample was produced. In the Jamaican music industry, it's normal to record your own song on other people's beats. Hundreds of songs can be on the same rhythm and if you want to record on that beat. Speaker 7 It's two things that could happen back then in the reggae world. One, we could reach out to the producers like Yo, we have the right track for that track. Speaker 1 Or they could skip getting permission and go to option 2 to recreate the rhythm from scratch with little changes. This is called versioning, like creating another version of the same song. One day in 1990, Sleepy Wonder shows up to the studio where musician were busy cooking up the remix of the Dumbo rhythm. Speaker 7 I walked in where they were adding the percussions. The bass was just following the drum. There was a boom, boom. There was a steady bass hitting every so often. Speaker 1 It was just like the original, but more digital, a little harder hitting, and they added their own sauce, like in Ballast, which gave a little bit of a Latin flair. Speaker 7 The mayonnaise to the sandwich, so to speak. Speaker 1 A bunch of artists were there that day to record their own versions on the rhythm. Speaker 7 Nando boom was there boba general myself. Speaker 1 Nando Boom is from Panama and recorded a Spanish cover of Them Bow. Sleepy Wonder and Bobo General did a song on the beat called Founder. Speaker 7 And the results, wow man, that thing took New York by storm and all them Spanish speaking islands and country, they adapted it and it was beautiful. Speaker 1 But the reason we're talking to Sleepy, His record had an instrumental version of the new beat on the B side. That instrumental is the one that end up getting sample over and over again and becoming the Dembo beat we all know and love. How Dem Bow Transformed Dance Floors and Mixtapes DJs in Puerto Rico started literally flying to New York, going to the Jamaican record store and buying up every copy of Sleepy Wonders record that they could find. I remember when this instrumental hit back at the noise. It was the only thing we wanted to spit on. Everywhere we go, same rhythm. It took over all the other rhythms, DA Negro says. It changed everything because it made the dancing the main attraction. When he played rap at the Noise, only the guys took over the dance floor, but with Dumbo Estamos Periando it became sexier. The beat seems to have almost magic powers all over the Puerto. Speaker 5 Rican. Adam. Speaker 1 Aviles, AKADJ, Adam, he was my DJ As soon as that needle drop, the response that that damn ball beat has was crazy. People was moving the body, especially Las Nenas. I don't say that he tried to put another rhythm but people wasn't feeling it. People would just stop dancing until he put them both back on. It became the main big use in underground music. Soon it was the backing track, not just at the Noise, but to hundreds of Puerto Rican parties and rap battles in the Casa Rio. But with popularity Katosawa came competition, and soon the Noise wouldn't be the only place where you could hear on the ground. And then we'll start some problems at the Noise. Young rappers were rapping over a mix of Dumbo and hip hop beat and making music. Speaker 5 Negro. Speaker 1 Says that they were accidentally creating a whole new genre of music. Just thinking about how to get people into the club. He never thought about recording and selling the music itself, but somebody was thinking about. Speaker 5 It this is my man. Speaker 1 Right there another one of my adopted father in the general in the early 90s. He was also one of the hottest day in San Juan De Amigo de Negro they used to produce together. Speaker 5 The A Negro EDA Playero. Speaker 1 Negro on the decks. Speaker 5 The A Negro acendo a scratch. Speaker 1 And player on the keys. Speaker 5 EO attract con El piano. Speaker 1 Here's Cacho Lopez. Speaker 6 DJ Playero was there and he was always like the second man. You had the a Negro and you had them DJ Playero. Speaker 1 Negro was the top dog in the underground scene, the guy that made the connection. He was always hustling. He was at the club, but Plajero was a low key behind the scene guy, like more of a studio rat. Plajero's team was making mixtapes. He was known for having the best ones, the best rap and dance hall from New York and Jamaica. He make mixes on cassettes. 10 copies. Speaker 5 And. Speaker 1 5 minutes later they begun. He hummed them out to promote himself. After DJ people copy the tapes and they will spread around the hood. He will label them Plajero Uno, Plajero dos plajero Diaz, Plajero Vente, Plajero Trenta. Daddy Yankee's Rise and the Underground's Rivalries So he's up to and he gets an idea to try something new, make a different kind of mixtape. Still playing rap and dance hall. Speaker 5 But but this time. Speaker 1 He chose to have all the Puerto Rican artists and new kids that were emceeing at the noise and put that out. Speaker 5 Had to be a Kennedy. Speaker 1 At the time, Plagiro live in a housing project called Villa Kennedy. He took our producers there to. Speaker 5 See it Plagiro? Speaker 1 Points to a little third floor. Speaker 5 Apartment building. Speaker 1 33 apt 5O1. Speaker 5 I found on the Comenzo El underground. Speaker 1 Plajero says for him, that's where the underground started. What we call reggaeton today started there. Speaker 5 It. Speaker 1 Was 1992 Word spread around San Juan that Plajero was recording MCS on Taldia, so everybody began to show up at his apartment where he had a little studio. Speaker 5 I remember that 10/15/20 singers in line. Speaker 1 Ranking Stone was one of the kids that show up there. Speaker 5 Everybody with a pencil or pen and no boogie hand Writing, writing, writing. OK. Speaker 1 All the way down the stairs from the apartment out onto the blog, the MC's made a line. Speaker 5 Waiting for 5-6 hour. Speaker 1 Plajero recorded every one of them. Speaker 5 OK, next please. Speaker 1 Someone's turn will come up and he asked what you got. Plajero heard rhymes, woke up a bit. That much everything. Speaker 5 Is 1 take. Speaker 1 And boom. Speaker 5 123 record. Speaker 1 On to the next MC. Speaker 5 You want to record? OK come, I recorded. You are recorded. OK, come, I recorded too. Speaker 1 Everyone who was anybody on the scene was there, including a skinny 16 year old kid with a lot of raw talent, AKA Daddy Yankee. A kid who live across the street from Plajero. And back then, honey, he used to rub this little mustache. Speaker 5 Don't say Yankee. Speaker 1 From a young age, Plajero describes him as hungry. One way or another, Golmo Saya Janki was determined to get out of the hood. At that time, his dream was to play Major League Baseball and it was looked like things were going to happen for him. He had tried out for Los Marineros de Seattle, but he had another talent. He could rap really fast. Speaker 5 The Hip Hop Cantando. Speaker 1 Plaguero He was blown away and knew for sure he wanted to put Junkie on his mixtape. The guy was destined for big things. This new tape from Plaguero. Plaguero 20 Siete When he hit the streets it was a sensation. Everybody was playing it. The first underground mixtape and all of a sudden Plaguero was the name everybody was talking about and the Negro was pissed. Negros and Seas was all over Plagiaro's tape. The people that he put on stage, the people that he gave them the opportunity. Speaker 5 And. Speaker 1 Now the son of a bitch is stealing my singers and putting them on his tape, so neither they say that he was going to put out his own tapes. They are going to be called the Noise, just like the club, and the music was going to be way dirtier, more St. Speaker 5 Than playero it. Speaker 1 Will be the trap music of that time. At the conflict on Tenegro Pliero, it was something new. Because when people remember those early, early days at the noise, the thing they remember the most is the love. The love between the artists. Here's Don Chesina. Speaker 2 It wasn't like who's better, who's not. Everyone was like a family. We all stayed together like little crews and having fun hanging around and each of us waiting for a turn to go and do our shows. Speaker 1 And tolos exponentes and momento Michael Superstar said he believed the spark that made the underground movement into the huge thing it became was the unity between everybody. There was a brotherhood. But that that was about to change. A Bullet Changes Daddy Yankee's Path Forever Things were about to get a lot of more tense in the underground scene. Matenzo Mas Violento. And one day, in the middle of Plaido working on one of his tapes, something happened that will change Daddy Yankee's life forever. In the middle of recording together one day that a Yankee was outside talking to Plagiaro's wife and young son, Lisa M was there too. Speaker 3 We was supposed to record that day. Speaker 1 Plagiaro had just gone inside the apartment and all of a sudden. Speaker 3 And we hear the shot like. Speaker 1 Not just one or two shots, A lot of them. Everyone on the streets scatters. Plagiaro start screaming out the window. Speaker 5 My kid and. Speaker 1 My wife are out there, don't shoot. Speaker 5 Me. Speaker 1 When the shooting stops, he runs down to see what. His son and his wife were safe. They took over under a car, but he didn't see Yankee. Where's Raymond? On his screen. Speaker 3 Lisa, Lisa. And we running to see what happened and we see him like on the floor. Speaker 1 They found him laying down by the curb. He was shot in his leg. The bullets came from an AK47 and tore his femur, ruining his chances of ever playing baseball again. That's when he decided that he was going to take this music thing seriously. You could say that the Daddy Yankee that we know today was born that day. Los tiro Bola and Puerto Rico those days in a Casa Rios. But those shots were just a few in the war that was growing all around the underground scene. A war over drugs, territory, power between the dealers that run the projects. Ilos en sidel underground. We get caught up in that shit. Speaker 6 DJ Negra also like putting together people that hated each other, like in the same album, like people that had a war. He knew what he was doing. Speaker 2 It was so big that in one time it was like people only want to hear beef, you know, and a lot of. Speaker 1 Projects came out of. Speaker 2 Drug money, and that's what we had. We didn't. Speaker 5 Have no record labels. LOUD: The History of Reggaeton Credits We had nobody shooting. Speaker 1 That's next time on LOUD the history of reggaeton. Now The History of Reggaeton is a Spotify original podcast from Futuro Studios. This podcast was written and reported by Marlon Bishop and Luis Gallo and edited by Sofia Palisaca from Spotify executive producers Gina Belbag, Adrian Arredondo, Jessica Molina and Julio A Pabon, with producing help from Dan Behar. Executive produced for Futuro Studios by Marlon Bishop, Produced by Luis Gallo, Gini Montalvo, Catalina Gatta, Eccleston, Hermes Ajala, Joaquin Cutler, Sandra Riano, Nicole Roswell and Daniela Tejogerson. Additional production by Christian Herrera, Sebastian Der Bais Nunez, Ezequiel Rodriguez Sandino and Juan Diego Ramirez. Fat Checking by Tatiana Diaz. Designer mixing by Gini Montalvo and Stephanie LeBeau with help on this episode from Rosanna Cavan. Our theme song is by Max. Original music by echo and Danny. Crazy town for the Echo team and Impulse El. Intellectual music supervision by Big Sing George. Truly recorded at Hega Studio by Mallory Invernon. Special thanks to Julio Ricardo Barela, Luis Luna, Liliana Ruiz, Josh Lindgren, Antonia Cerejido, Sonia Clavell, Ricardo Montalvo, Jasmine Afifi, O'Neill Anderson, Jessica Diaz, Hurtado, Kimu Elolia, Sarah Gaynor, Vijean Garvey, Jessie Hart, Sue Lu, Brian Marquis, Lauren Minke, Ashley Nesbi, Andrea Silenci, Way Slitkin, and Jordan Tochinsky. For production support. I'm your host Evie Queen. Make sure to follow LOUD The History of Reggaeton Only on Spotify.