The origin (and export) of the urban genre is not understood without Don Omar; For a reason he is the King of Reggaetón. The Puerto Rican celebrates 25 years in music and in 2024 he will return to the stage with his own tour, titled Back to Reggaetón.
This tour will begin next March 7 in Pennsylvania and will visit up to 25 cities in the United States and thens continue through Europe and Latin America. To review his career, the evolution of the setlist from his first concerts to the present and much more, the singer sat down with Leila Cobo for Billboard en Español.
“Back to Reggaeton is returning to the field of work and touring again. The last tour I did was with Daddy Yankee on Los Insuperables Tour. (…) This opportunity to take 25 years of music around the world is super exciting and will require two hours of complete music to be able to go on this journey through time.from the first song that the world knew and made a hit in my career — like Give it, give it,, which is the topic that I cannot avoid doing in any presentation. “I don’t get bored, nor do the public, that’s important too,” she said.
He has expressed that The tour could feature great guest artists, such as Wisin y Yandel, Tito El Bambino or Zion & Lennox. What’s more, many have let him know that they will go wherever Don Omar needs them. “Some colleagues have asked me not to leave them out of this, and I am treating it as a privilege. If they feel love, joy and a desire to share with you, you did something right in these 25 years,” he says.
From doing an encore of the same song to a discography full of essentials
As the media itself points out, The first tour that Don Omar gave through our country, back in the 2000s, he sang Dale Don Dale up to three times each time he offered a show. The explanation was simple: “I had no repertoire!”, he admits. And at that time “I made music for the simple fact that I liked it… and it was a genre that was so street-oriented, so ours, so Puerto Rican in terms of slang, how we dressed, how we communicated, the words we used… Everything was super local”, that there was no other intention behind it.
However, that first song became a success outside its borders: in the Dominican Republic and New York, for example, where it also began to catch on. The gas by Daddy Yankee.
Currently, his repertoire is full of great songs that we must classified as essential when creating a reggaeton playlist: Poor Devil, The Sun Came Out, The Lord of the Night, Virtual Diva… Songs that, as the singer himself says, “made him who he is today.”
Reference and example of many current artists, such as Ñengo Flow, Farruko, Arcángel, Cosculluela, Natti Natasha or Jhayco, who 10 years ago wrote songs for the King of Reggaeton himself. “Because of things like this, I do feel that I have a responsibility, for what I do, what I say and what people see me doing… because anything I can say, do or how I can behave, can have a effect on all of them,” he says.
