As expected, Bad Bunny has the most Latin Grammy nominations for his groundbreaking album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” including all three of the top awards: album of the year, record of the year and song of the year. His album has received much fanfare for its creativity, politics and genre-bending sounds.
Yet without taking away from Bad Bunny’s shine, it is worth mentioning that albums are group projects too.
In our forthcoming book, “P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance,” Vanessa Díaz and I tell the stories of how Bad Bunny collaborated with his longtime producers Tainy and MAG to create some of the biggest Latin music hits of our time. And yet, neither Tainy nor MAG were nominated in the category for producer of the year.
How can it be that the Latin Grammys overlooked the very people who helped create one of the biggest Latin music juggernauts in history?
If we look at history, this is hardly surprising. In fact, I wrote about this same conundrum in my book “Remixing Reggaetón” 10 years ago. I discussed how reggaetón producers Luny Tunes were similarly overlooked by the Latin Grammys in 2005. Luny Tunes composed the vast majority of songs that dominated the airwaves that year, with hits by major reggaetoneros such as Tego Calderón, Don Omar and Ivy Queen. They were the masterminds behind “Gasolina,” Daddy Yankee’s song that arguably mainstreamed reggaetón. Shockingly, Luny Tunes did not receive (nor have they ever received) a nomination for producer of the year.
The Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization that administers the Latin Grammys, was founded in 1997 when Latin artists criticized the Grammys for excluding Latin music — and with good reason. The music industry as a whole has long underinvested in Latin music and musicians.
However, LARAS itself has historically marginalized and excluded important genres of music as well. Since the very first Latin Grammy Awards in 2000, artists from genres like reggaetón and música Mexicana have protested LARAS for dismissing their music, despite the fact that they’ve dominated the charts. In fact, this year, música Mexicana group Fuerza Régida’s blockbuster album “111xpantia” did not receive an album of the year nod, another major snub. This is not surprising, either, given the biases against the working-class immigrant communities that created genres like banda and norteña, and that paved the way for Fuerza Régida.
Similarly, reggaetón developed in the working-class barrios and public housing developments of Puerto Rico. The predominantly Black and working-class communities that created reggaetón were also subject to classist and racist policies in the name of combatting crime. In fact, reggaetón itself became associated with criminal activity, prompting responses from artists including Ivy Queen and Vico C’s “Somos raperos pero no delincuentes” (We’re rappers, not delinquents) and Eddie Dee’s “Señor Oficial” (Mr. Officer). Despite the mainstreaming of reggaetón, the genre has never fully shed this reputation — one that is based in racism and classism.
To that end, Bad Bunny fans may be shocked to hear that he has never won a Latin Grammy outside of the urban categories. “Un Verano Sin Ti,” arguably his biggest album before “DTMF”, did not win the Latin Grammy for album of the year even though it was the first Spanish-language album in history to be nominated for the corresponding category at the so-called gringo Grammys.
It is no accident that the most nominated songs on “DTMF” nominated for awards are those with live instrumentation and more “traditional” sounds like salsa, while the reggaetón producers who helped create them are not.
The exclusion of Tainy and MAG from producer of the year despite their critical work on “DTMF” (not to mention their other work, like on Rauw Alejandro’s album “Cosa Nuestra,” which is also nominated for album of the year) is just one more incident in a long history of slighting reggaetón.
At the heart of this slight are the racism and classism that still permeate Latin media industries. If LARAS truly wants to live up to its claim as a celebration of Latin music in all of its forms, then Tainy and MAG should be nominated for their incredible, innovative music that has propelled not just reggaetón but Latin music to new heights all over the globe.