We think that the reggaeton is pop now.
You don’t have to treat it like this urban dark thing.
Everybody is listening to that in Latin America.
Fonsi - we went to Miami, he came here we did a bunch of work in his whole album.
One of those songs was “Despacito."
He started talking about the cumbia vibe that he wanted.
He wanted this...
We weren't copying a trend exactly.
We were trying to do reggaeton without doing reggaeton.
We started adding one thing and then a month later, another kind and them boom, boom, boom.
It became the finished product.
Fonsi is one of the best singers you will ever find in the world.
And he's a very very extremely talented guy that can morph into whatever.
He had hits as a ballad performer but...
A lot of hits.
But I think it's very natural for him to sing pretty much anything.
I know that it was kind of a "risky" move in a way for his fans but I think he was very
honest about it.
Like he wanted to do that.
I think he was the guy that push it.
It was nobody telling him, "Do urban thing."
He was like, "I wanna do this.
I feel it's right."
At the beginning it was more scary for us than for him.
The risky move was to make the song reggaeton but not too respectful with the genre.
Not to do a classic reggaeton track but to do a pop thing.
The one mix, like the Daddy Yankee Fonsi version we had like four, five, six versions of that.
But then after that, of course, then comes Bieber's version.
He did it really fast.
He recorded in Colombia.
In Columbia.
He heard the song in Colombia, it was pretty big.
He record it and then four days after that it was released.
It was on Spotify and everywhere.
It was of course awesome because it's Bieber but especially because he approaches that
genre that we've been listening to since a long time ago in a very different way.
That melody he does in the beginning is not a reggaeton melody at all but it fits beautiful.
And he sang it in Spanish, which is awesome.
99% of the times we're in Pro Tools.
We're kind of a little bit obsessed with organizing the sessions and having it color coded.
Names are always the same so it's quick and fast if you have to go and fix something.
One of the interesting things with this song is that it breaks a lot of rules.
We usually don't take one minute to get to the chorus. That's scary for us.
But when it works, it works.
We started with this plug.
That's the intro of the song.
It wasn't like that it was just a regular plug.
This guy has reverbs like printed inside.
It wasn't like that it was just a regular plug.
And then started building the chorus beat.
We wanted to stop as much as we could without making the people fall.
This part I remember going through it, 'cause it's not normal.
You usually have four on the floor or you have every two quarters.
And then for the hook part...
We're straight.
But I think this "tune tune tune" thing is special.
And then one special thing about this chorus is that we're not making any subdivisions
on the first note so that it feels like it's stopping and bouncing in again.
So, if you play it.
Then the hi-hat comes in doing the...
It gives you like a...
Real guys playing here, the humans.
Cowbell.
The timbal, it's a very important channel for us.
In the song, it's accentuating the important parts of the song and it helps you
feeling like a new part is coming and punching you in the face with that.
We stole those two guys from salsa music.
This is the real guache.
And then we put a high-hat so it sounds like
More HD.
Uh-huh.
And then the Guira.
This is also a very very very important thing.
This is used in a lot of Latin music but this is the Cumbia.
If you hear this that's Cumbia.
These are the Latin real channels of the song.
And these two guys - these are really important.
This is old school pop.
This is Dr. Luke.
This is the real one.
This actually got really loud in the mix.
That is this song.
This is like a little vocal sample thing with a "hey" made out of Fonsi saying just "hey".
Acoustic guitar.
It was actually played.
But then we chop it and make it really digital.
And then the main guy, which is Christian Nieves, that is one of the best cuatro players
from Puerto Rico.
When we started this song we always wanted to put this at the beginning because we wanted
it to feel very Puerto Rican and very ethnic.
Without the cuatro sound the song becomes more normal and the cuatro gives it
a really unique character.
That's only cuatro, it's the main thing.
It's pretty.
There's actually three tracks of cuatro.
And it has kind of like a tumbao thing like you would do in salsa with a piano in the chorus.
It's not very straight.
It's just doing its thing and it makes you dance more.
Without that channel you can play without the cuatro the song feels like a more programmed
empty thing.
Like a more electronic thing but we don't want that because we are working with a pop
artists who, you know the backgrounds of Fonsi.
So we like to have soul in the beat.
Yeah, the combination of beats in real musicians and real instrument...
It's everything.
It's always a good thing to do.
We rarely produce something with only machines.
So this is the song without any humans.
It's cool.
But it's cold.
But it's cold, exactly.
Doesn't have soul.
So compare it.
That's life.
It's a perfect combination 'cause you have all the human souls on there but you have
the perfect kick punching you in the face every time.
I remember Mauricio coming to my house at first, to work.
And they were like, "The song is number one in Columbia."
Like wow.
That's cool.
Yeah, that's awesome.
"The song is still number one in Columbia now it's number one in Mexico."
"Oh, wow."
And then the song is still number one everywhere and we're like when are we going to stop shaking
hands and being like, "Awesome man."
And it hasn't stopped.
It's insane.
Everybody's got that theory that the language doesn't matter but it's hard to prove it.
And this song proves it.
You will dance to it and you will learn it even if you don't know how to speak the language.