It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single featuring Justin Bieber is destined to bang. "Eenie Meenie"? Are you kidding? "Let Me Love You"? Forget about it. "Where Are U Now?" Pass the fucking aux cord and watch my Uber rating plummet into the depths of hell. For posterity, there was also that rancid collaboration with Far East Movement that sounds like the entire Oceana club franchise gained sentience and learned what a drop was, but after a few WKDs and a pinger I'm sure the general attitude towards that would change too.Thus, it's not surprising that a remix of "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber would, to employ the modern parlance, "go off" – but the degree to which it has exploded was unprecedented. It's become the first mostly Spanish language to enter the Billboard Hot 100's top 5 since Los Del Rio's wedding DJ staple "Macarena" in 1996 and 1997. As far as YouTube is concerned it's the biggest music debut of 2017 so far, accumulating more than 20 million views in its first 24 hours. As far as actual people are concerned, it simply bangs. It slaps. It sizzles. It is "a tune!" It grabs you by the hips and forces you to move in ways that are ungovernable and probably quite upsetting if you're as white as I am.For the unacquainted, "Despacito" – which translates to "slowly" in English – is a fusion of Latin pop and reggaeton by two of Puerto Rico's finest: Luis Fonsi and, naturally, Daddy Yankee. As someone whose lived experience of Spanish language music begins and ends with shotting Licor 43 to Pitbull at a foam party in Costa Brava, I am not best placed to comment on what this means for Latin music apart from the obvious (in Fonsi's words: "this is great"). But let's pause for a second and think about how wild it is that the first mostly Spanish language track to enter the top tier of the US charts in more than two decades is a remix from an unexpected yet perfect holy trinity of Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber. Not Enrique Iglesias, not Shakira, not even Daddy Yankee in his own right – but a guy who started out in a group called "Big Guys" which also included Joey Fatone, the man responsible for "Gasolina" and, well, Justin Bieber.Read more on Noisey.
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