There’s always something gratifying about two fan favorites from different generations co-signing each other. Last night, former Calle 13 frontman Residente and trap en español poster boy Bad Bunny met for the first time. Feast your eyes on the magic of this moment below:
As two artists with some of the most talked-about releases of 2017 (“Soy Peor” and Residente’s self-titled solo debut), it’s no surprise that René Pérez and Bad Bunny sat down to kick it (though I am dying to know who hit up whom first). Growing up in Puerto Rico, there’s a good chance Bad Bunny was raised on Calle 13’s genre-defining albums (he even references René’s love life on “No Te Hagas” (“Tú extrañas este bicho como Denisse extraña el de René,” a nod to the tabloid romance between Pérez and former beauty queen Denisse Quiñones).
In the Instagram caption, Bad Bunny joked about getting René drunk and convincing him to collab on a trap song. The former Calle 13 member has voiced his skepticism of the genre in the past, most recently at last year’s Latin Billboard Awards, where he claimed that trap en español is simply a copy of a U.S.-born genre, and that the top five trap records on the Latin Billboard charts were “identical, all using major chords.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OabCqZA8kjs
The comments launched a thousand beefs in the urbano universe, perhaps most visibly the tiraera with fellow Puerto Rican rapper Tempo, sparking a dialogue about the quality and integrity of the Latin trap movement as it evolves.
In November, Residente expressed more of his concerns, this time over the music industry’s investment in celebrating artists with tons of followers and views. During his Latin Grammys acceptance speech for Best Urban Song, he told audience members that making good art has little to do with numbers. “Please, everyone, stop looking at the amount of followers, the amount of views, and start talking more about the music.”
René seems to have referenced that advice once again during his meet-up with Bad Bunny. On Instagram, he wrote, “We talked about how numbers within music should not be a priority even though they are important and how to channel those lyrics so those ‘hits’ are not just hits.”
No matter what you think of the trap movement, it’s refreshing to see an icon like Réne pass wisdom down to the next generation of urbano stars. The genre still faces plenty of criticism from industry titans and older generations of urbano fans, and a co-sign from an OG is a great look for the movement.
Now cross your fingers for that drunken collab to come to fruition.