Reggaeton’s Global Expansion and Wide-Open Future

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The current generation of reggaeton superstars — J Balvin, Rauw Alejandro, Farruko and more — find themselves in constant dialogue with pop, EDM and hip-hop, and have become ambitious ambassadors of cultural exchange. As the genre is growing in global popularity, it is also stratifying into subsets, some leaning toward the synthetic and some returning to roots.

That sign of reggaeton’s growth and maturity also portends questions about who will lead the genre into its future, and what that future might sound like.

On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about reggaeton’s engagements with the pop music mainstream, how its biggest stars navigate the responsibilities of being emissaries and also recent developments in Dominican dembow.

Guests:

• Isabelia Herrera, The New York Times’s arts critic fellow

• Katelina Eccleston, reggaeton historian at reggaetonconlagata.com

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