The concept of a crossover star in the “Latin” music industry is more than just a bit icky. Whenever a Spanish-speaking crooner or pop star rises to the point of ubiquity in Latin America, they’re expected—mostly by ravenous music executives with pesos in their eyes—to crossover into the Anglo music market with an English-speaking album. It’s a model that proved wildly successful for a handful of artists in the late ’90s/early ’00s, with breakout hit records from Ricky Martin, Shakira, and Marc Anthony recorded in English with Anglo producers.
Romeo Santos’ path to becoming arguably the biggest Latin pop star of the moment is not without precedent. The Bronx-born son of Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrants first made a name for himself fusing bachata with pop music as the lead singer of Aventura, not unlike Martin’s rise fronting the boy band Menudo. Anthony (who himself got his start singing backup on Menudo records) had dabbled in fusing salsa, hip-hop, and house music with Little Louie Vega before fully embracing his salsa roots.
But this is where their paths diverge. Though it’s still quite early in his solo career, Santos has shown no signs of crossing over in the traditional sense. His latest album, Golden, is a bachata record that fuses various styles and sounds, from bossa nova (“El Papel, Pt. 1 (Versión Amante)”) to hip-hop, doo-wop (“Un Vuelo A LA”), and even Puerto Rican reggaetón (“Bella y Sensual”) and jibaro. Even when he makes a nod to new English-speaking fans (“I’ve been doing this a while/Put in work and traveling miles”) with a hip-pop intro co-written by Ne-Yo, he closes it out with a verse in Spanish. The pan-Latin Spanglish vibes of Santos’ work feels representative of his home borough of the Bronx, where all of these sounds co-exist, where Dominican dembow lives next to Colombian reggaetón, and your tio’s salsa shares space with abuelo’s merengue. But for the all the myriad sounds Golden pulls from, its roots are firmly planted in bachata, the sounds of the campo.
Bachata, an oft-maligned genre born in the Dominican Republic, has long been associated with the country’s poor rural classes. Rooted in romance, early bachata evolved from the slower Cuban bolero style, a raw, personal counterpart to the longstanding tradition of merengue orchestras. The sound is defined by a requinto lead (a smaller acoustic guitar with a higher pitch), and a segunda rhythm guitar, with a rhythm section dominated by the bass guitar and high-pitched drums like bongos or a tambora, and maracas or a guira. Los blanquitos, the Dominican Republic’s white upper class, looked down on the music—and the parties where it would be played—a sentiment not improved by the evolution of bachata into dance music, which often strayed from romance to raunch, both on the floor and in the lyrics. But even as Dominican radio and television ignored emerging bachata stars in the homeland, its popularity exploded across Latin America and the barrios across the U.S.: Look no further than the runaway success of Aventura in the early aughts.
Latin stars have often been used to spice up otherwise staid pop tracks, exploitative relationships that often serve the interests of the English-speaking star more than anything else. Santos hasn’t shied away from collaborations with such artists, but there’s a big difference: They come to him. When Santos and Usher go toe-to-toe with dueling falsettos on his solo debut Fórmula, Vol. 1, it’s on a bachata song (“Promise”); when Drake courted him on Nothing Was the Same with his line “Spanish girls love me like I’m Aventura,” the resulting collaboration saw Drake singing—in Spanish!—on Fórmula, Vol. 2’s “Odio”. And while the dogshit guest verses that Lil Wayne (“All Aboard”) and Nicki Minaj (“Animales”) contributed to early records may have been throwaways, it’s telling that they were the features, and not the other way around. On Golden, the two Americans featured strictly play the background; Swizz drops some Beatz on “Premio,” Santos’ ballad to his skills of seduction, and while Ne-Yo’s fingerprints are all over the “Golden Intro,” his voice is not. Such is the gravity of Santos’ orbit that when he collaborates with English-speaking artists, they’re the ones doing the assimilating.
Even Spanish-speaking stars are drawn in. Golden features Juan Luis Guerra (“Carmín”), the Dominican superstar who dabbled in several genres but is credited with helping bring bachata to the mainstream, and Julio Iglesias, the Spanish croon-quistador who unwittingly collaborated on Golden’s ode to a man’s best friend…his penis (“El Amigo”). Instant classics like “Ay Bendito” are the kind of jams that bring both adolescents and octogenarians out to the dancefloor at the quinceñera. If Santos is doing any sort of crossing over, this is what it looks like; bridging generations and the various cultures of the Latin diaspora, getting los blanquitos in Santo Domingo to shell out fat stacks of cash to see and hear the music of the campo, and selling out Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium.
Santos recently told Rolling Stone that the idea that a Latin star needs to cut an English-speaking record to crossover is a “misconception,” one proved wrong by the runaway success of Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee’s summer smash “Despacito” (a remix saw Justin Beiber try on one of Fonsi’s Spanish verses on for size). “I sold out two Yankee Stadiums and all of my hits are in Spanish, and they’re bachata,” he said. “That's a sign that you don’t have to do that. The number one song in the world is a reggaetón called ‘Despacito’ and that’s beautiful.”
“Despacito” proves that Spanish language music is palatable for the mainstream, but we’ve yet to see a global superstar singing in Spanish be fully embraced by the mainstream as anything other than a novelty. Santos’ considerable vocal talents are often tempered by his undeniably corny “Romeo” persona, but the artifice only seems to endear him to his fans even more. On Golden, we see the embodiment of what makes him special; un bachatero with a healthy respect for the working-class roots of the genre, unafraid to pull in influences from across Latinidad. And while Ricky Martin-levels of crossover success might not be realistic for Santos (or bachata), when Santos can flirt with selling a million copies (Formula, Vol. 2) and sell out stadiums throughout the Americas, all while staying true to himself and the fans that propelled him to stardom—does it even matter?
