Elebleu (aka Eric Gamboa) and Beasty Godiva (aka William Batiz) carry on Latin America’s history of cultural collision with their latest offering, “Ven P’acá,” premiering today on Remezcla. Perhaps best described as ambient dembow, “Ven P’acá” is the first collaboration between the two artists, but it’s one that’s years in the making.
As Elebleu told Remezcla over email, “William and I are longtime friends and have always fooled [around] writing music conjointly, but it wasn’t until years and years after that we actually sat down and wrote something that we both liked.” The duo, hailing from Guadalajara and Hermosillo respectively, got around to working with each other at an important creative crossroads.
For Elebleu, the track is both a product of his growing interest in experimentation with the dembow riddim, which has becoming increasingly fluid as genre boundaries continue to erode online. While the early- and mid-00s might be considered the pinnacle of reggaeton – or at least the era we look back on the most fondly – recent years have seen a repurposing of classic tra tra tra stylings.
Beasty Godiva’s airy vocals hover over the track, while Profff and 12 Pasos & Montenegro’s Parrillat made their mark in arrangement and post-production. The collaborative effort is what you might expect from Aphex Twin if he’d been raised Uptown instead of the United Kingdom. Acid dembow for short.
Editor’s note: Elebleu is a former Remezcla employee.