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GASOLINA!: Former Boston-area residents and Harvard cafeteria workers Saldana and Cabrera are now the kings of reggaetón. |
Francisco “Luny” Saldana is in a San Juan furniture store when I get him on the phone. “I just built my own house, and I’m getting it ready. After all the hard work, now I got my own place.” In fact he’s bought up 10 houses since moving to Puerto Rico, but browsing through the aisles still gives him a sense of satisfaction. Now that he’s a superproducer, even the simple act of sofa shopping is more fun than it used to be.When in 2002 Saldana and Victor “Tunes” Cabrera left their jobs at a Harvard University cafeteria to make music full-time as Luny Tunes, the word “reggaetón” meant nothing to most English speakers, even though the Latin-Caribbean community was grooving to well-stirred cocktails of dancehall reggae riddims and rugged rhymes en español. Four years later, they’ve helped make reggaetón a global success. “My boss made Universal Records $40 million last year on reggaetón only,” Saldana says — and a hefty chunk of that money was no doubt earned on songs that he produced with Cabrera. They are the genre’s biggest hitmakers by far. In 2004, they produced Daddy Yankee’s omnipresent “Gasolina,” and their arsenal of synthesized beats has gotten only more sleek. Untouchable street cred, critical buzz, and chart dominion: it’s good to be the kings of Latin music.
The way they see things, it would be even better to rule American pop. “We want our songs to be everywhere, you know?” Cabrera says when I reach him, hours after he’s pulled an all-nighter in the studio. “We want to be on MTV all the time, to be part of a music that everybody likes.” He and Saldana tell me they’re courting a roster of marquee names from English-language rap and reggae to guest on The Benjamins, the all-new compilation they plan to release as early as this fall. Even as they put the finishing touches on that album and a slew of other reggaetón projects, they’re eager to expand the Luny Tunes brand. “We can do any type of music right now,” Saldana boasts. They recently recorded a straight-up R&B track with adult-contemporary rocker Lenny Kravitz. R. Kelly, who featured one of their simmering numbers on his last oversexed soul album, has expressed interest in securing another for his next installment. They’ve even been brought in to lend their beats to heirhead Paris Hilton’s upcoming pop-album debut. “Not that I’m underestimating anyone, but I didn’t expect Paris Hilton to sing the way she does,” Cabrera says. “It might be the next step for reggaetón to establish itself in the Anglo market.”
Saldana and Cabrera have been watching that market since they moved with their families to the Boston area in the mid ’90s. Born in the Dominican Republic, they first encountered reggaetón’s distinctive pulse alongside merengue, bachata, and other local styles. But as a teenager in Lynn, Cabrera found himself captivated by best-selling hip-hoppers like Timbaland, Dr. Dre, and Eminem, as well as popular dancehall toasters like Beenie Man and Sean Paul. And Saldana emphasizes his connection to the Bay State. “I wanted my kid to be born in Peabody,” he says of his son, now two years old. “I felt Boston was my home.” Luny Tunes emerged from a generation of young people who identify as strongly with urban American culture as with their Latin-Caribbean roots — the demographic sweet spot that has made possible reggaetón’s commercial triumph.
But they found that reggaetón was still largely limited to the barrios when they relocated to San Juan, the home of the reggaetón scene. Cabrera: “It was too underground before we came. We had ideas to make it more commercial. They’d grab an R&B melody and put it over a reggaetón beat. The Latin community didn’t respect it because of that.” Following the example of their favorite rap producers, Luny Tunes ditched the blatant samples in favor of original synth compositions and coached vocalists to follow radio-friendly arrangements. Saldana: “Before us, no one used to sing. They used to get before the microphone and talk shit. We wanted to make it pretty, make it sound good for the ear.” Toning down explicit lyrics proved especially difficult. Cabrera: “At first they didn’t want to do it, because it was a street thing. They felt like if they were making music too clean or too pretty, people were not going to like it. It was the other way around. As reggaetón cleaned up, it just got bigger.”
Working with everyone who’s anyone in the genre, Luny Tunes have guided reggaetón toward their own eclectic but sales-conscious tastes. Saldana’s cleverly mutating drum programming builds on dancehall’s relentless syncopation with nods to other island rhythms while Cabrera weaves Dr. Dre’s chirping G-funk, Timbaland’s 24th-century club twitch, and a variety of tropical sources into his layered synth lines. It’s a recognizable formula with almost endless room for reinvention. As the 26 tracks of last year’s sprawling, dazzling Mas Flow 2 (Universal Latino) go by, the energy evolves but never falters.
