Spanish-Language Music Has Gone Global. Watch Rosalía Make Her Hit ‘Con Altura’

In a recent summer week, the most popular video on YouTube was not from Taylor Swift or Lil Nas X, but from a cadre of international musicians leading a global tidal wave of Spanish-language music.

“Con Altura,” by the Catalonian singer Rosalía, with J Balvin (a native of Medellín, Colombia) and El Guincho (from the Canary Islands), is now approaching half a billion views for its music video — it has another 155 million plays on Spotify — and as it topped the YouTube chart in late June, it led a crop of eight Spanish songs in its Top 10.

This is the new order of things in the increasingly diverse, genre-melding, multilingual world of pop: Language is no longer a barrier, world rhythms mix and cohere, cross-cultural collaboration is common and hip-hop influence seeps in from all sides.

In the case of “Con Altura,” Rosalía and the producers Pablo Díaz-Reixa (El Guincho) and Frank Dukes, a Canadian, entered a studio in Miami with the express mission of making a homage to old-school reggaeton, the resurgent Caribbean and Latin American rap style pioneered by artists like DJ Playero and Daddy Yankee.

After beginning with a simple, hypnotic vocal loop and the integral, slightly dirty boom-pa-dum-pa reggaeton drums, Rosalía scoured YouTube for a magic spark. There she came across a clip of dialogue from the Dominican radio and television personality Mariachi Budda — a catchphrase that translates literally to “with altitude,” and would go on to give the song its name and attitude.