Daddy Yankee Gives Biggie His Flowers For Inspiring Reggaeton

Daddy Yankee credited Biggie and Jamaican dancehall as influences on his music during “Track Star,” where he also claimed he came up with reggaeton’s name in 1992.

During an interview with Jack Coyne, the Puerto Rican star recognized The Notorious B.I.G. and Shabba Ranks as the artists who shaped him. Calling Biggie a formative influence, he said, “he’s a great legend and he inspired me a lot.”

He also named Super Cat, Buju Banton and Beenie Man among the Jamaican artists who influenced Puerto Rican musicians.

Yankee’s claim concerned naming reggaeton. The sound grew out of a wider movement of rappers, DJs and Caribbean music.

A 2023 history published by El País placed Yankee’s use of the word on a DJ Playero recording around 1991 or 1992. Playero recalled the moment as something that happened while they were making a song, rather than a planned announcement of a new genre.

“Nobody knows, neither him nor me. It was part of a song we were putting together,” Playero said when asked why Yankee used the word, calling it “a pure coincidence.”

That history also described an early scene built through cassette sales on Puerto Rican streets. DJ Adam Avilés recalled that the music was called underground before it had a place on radio, television or store shelves.

DJs recorded young rappers over the beats, helping the sound circulate outside the usual industry channels.

Scholar Petra Rivera-Rideau’s essay for the Library of Congress traced underground’s development to Puerto Rican DJs in the early 1990s.

Pioneers such as DJ Negro and Playero “combined sounds from US hip-hop, Jamaican dancehall, and Panamanian reggae en español” with ideas of their own, she wrote.

Yankee had described that connection in his 2007 interview with AllHipHop. Asked whether he considered himself a reggaeton or Hip-Hop artist, he answered, “Both. Both of them.”

“I started it in the Latin world, was as a Hip-Hop artist…Latin Hip-Hop artist. Then, Playero, the reggaeton godfather, introduced me to reggae music and dancehall music. He taught me how to get down [in] the reggae world like 13 years ago, 14 years ago. So thanks to him, I discovered reggaeton music. So I place myself as a Latin Hip-Hop artist and a reggaeton artist, Daddy Yankee told AllHipHop.com.

On “Track Star,” Yankee also credited New York as “the biggest bridge to reggaeton” and identified Héctor Lavoe’s “El Cantante.” “I’m a salsa boy, man, from the heart,” he said.

His own crossover became part of the historical record: “Gasolina,” from his 2004 album Barrio Fino, entered the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2023. Rivera-Rideau described how the song reached American rap and pop radio, MTV and BET, carrying reggaeton well beyond its early underground audience.