I just got home received a package from San Juan, check the location in Puerto Rico if you didn’t do geography in school. What do you do when your English is minimal and media says you have to do it in English to sell, well Tego responded beautifully with a reply in his native Espanola…

His response to me was that he reps his barrio whether you trying to understand him or not. He just out there to do his thing for la raza.

Puerto Rico is like an unofficial state of America. Christopher Columbus claimed he discovered the country – we all know it’s bullshit but for history’s sake we will play along and turn a blind eye. The Spaniards conquered the native people that was known as the Borinqueno. They got exterminated almost completely as was the case was with the Native Americans, slaves from Africa was taken over to Puerto Rico to work the plantations and from that strong blend of cultures comes Tego Calderon.

The country is rich with culture and history and you can hear it in the music that’s coming from there. Mix the rumba and the salsa with hip hop and you get the sound that’s popularized all over South America. 

Raggaeton has a large following in the Hispanic communities. Ego is one of the, if we can call it as such but yeah we will say it he one of the founding fathers of the Raggaeton movement and in his country of birth its nothing unusual to see a sea of brown skinned people lined up to see Tego. I think its beautiful how hip hop has found a voice in every country it conquered. I think right now hip hop is the biggest colonialist in the world without a doubt.

Tego should be releasing his new album in 2005. He just recently sent me a sampler that’s titled “El Enemy De Los Guasibiri”, the amount of tracks that he has out is enough to complete a double album. He is featured on basically every artist track that is trying to break in the Hispanic community.

Tego spoke about his musical influence and growing up in Puerto Rico. He was influenced by a lot of salsa but with the U.S being a birds eye view away from Puerto Rico the hip hop element had to prevail in the tunes. We know the peeps in South America are always on that party tip so the music will reflect that. 

I just watched this exciting interview he did with the people from Hennessy breaking down the artists that influenced him and that played an important role in the sculpturing of Puerto Rico’s culture. 

He mentions people like Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Spyro Gyra and how his music mixes a lot of different blends. I guess listening to tracks like Guasa Guasa, Mi Nigrita Linda and Aballarde will make you go and cop a copy of the lastest Spanish dictionary trying to dissect what he is saying in his music.

Tego also walked away recently with an award from The Source magazine for best international artist, an award he stole from local homeboys Skwatta Kamp. Africasgateway would like to congratulate Tego for achieving this accolade.

If you been a fan of world music and salsa is highly on ya list of musical preferences be sure to check out Tego who brings us all those elements with a twist of hip hop.

Thanks to Jiggiri records for the material and to Kenya Calderon for the hookups!

rush@africasgateway.com

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