The Best Reggaeton Songs of the 2010s

Sixteen weeks at number one on the Hot 100 belong to the Justin Bieber remix, but the canonical record is this January 2017 original on Universal Music Latino, co-written with Erika Ender — the remix stays off this list. Despacito opens with a plucked Puerto Rican cuatro alone before the dembow drops, and Daddy Yankee's mid-song chant section still detonates every dancefloor it touches.

Border case, flagged plainly: Danza Kuduro rides Lucenzo's Franco-Portuguese kuduro gallop rather than a dembow, and it was still the record every reggaetonero chased for two years. Machete Music put it on Meet the Orphans in 2010 — the linked copy sits on the Deluxe Version of that same 2010 recording — and the Fast Five end-credits placement the following spring made it global. That double-time synth riff never once lets the tempo breathe.

Built from French producer Willy William's own Voodoo Song, whose pitch-smeared vocal loop becomes both hook and drop — Mi Gente barely has a chorus and does not need one. The 2017 standalone single now streams mainly via compilations, so the link is the Vibras album cut of the same recording; the Beyoncé hurricane-relief remix was rejected in favour of the original.

Thirty weeks at number one on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs made El Perdón the inescapable Latin record of 2015. Nicky Jam and Enrique Iglesias trade lines over a minor-key Spanish guitar loop instead of harmonising, the dembow slowed to a heartbeat underneath them. The link is the Fénix album cut, whose copyright line carries the original 2015 recording forward.

Medellín is where this comeback was built: Nicky Jam relocated, got clean, and cut Travesuras for YT Rocket and La Industria in January 2014, singing every bar the old Nicky would have rapped. The melodic-romantic template half the decade copied starts here. The five-artist remix with J Balvin and Arcángel exists and was rejected — the solo original is the document.

Two notes, essentially — Ginza runs on the most minimal synth figure of the decade, a two-bar blink over bare dembow, with J Balvin's murmured 'dale' invitation doing the melodic work. It went to number one on Hot Latin Songs in 2015, the Medellín wave planting its flag. The link is the cut on Capitol Latin's Energía, carrying the 2015 single recording.

Rimas Entertainment released Callaita on May 31, 2019, co-billed to Tainy — a straight line from the Luny Tunes apprenticeship he started as a teenager to the wave he now produces. Border case: Bad Bunny works the Latin-trap line, but this one keeps a dembow pulse under its beach-air synth pads. Spotify strips the accent and renders the title Callaita.

Ovy on the Drums built Tusa on a plucked string loop that swells into real orchestral strings just before Nicki Minaj's half-English, half-Spanish verse — the flex of the arrangement. Released November 7, 2019 on Universal, it was the decade's last monster, a heartbreak anthem a whole continent screamed at closing time. KAROL G's opening lines are practically spoken, which sells the hurt.

Throwback by design, Dura strips the beat to kick, snare and a two-note keyboard — Daddy Yankee proving the old dembow still moves rooms harder than any pop concession. Released January 18, 2018, with the viral Dura Challenge doing the promotion for free. Spotify's copy now shows a Craft Latino line from the later catalogue sale, and the four-artist remix was rejected.

Odisea arrived August 25, 2017 on Aura Music through Sony's Latin arm and camped on the Latin albums chart for what felt like the whole decade. Se Preparó is its engine: Ozuna's high, boyish tenor sung end to end with no rap verse at all, the chorus landing inside the first thirty seconds. Nobody else in the genre sounded that clean.

A polyamory anthem sold as a lullaby: Maluma slides through the Felices los 4 hook in one long melisma while trap hi-hats tick over the dembow — urbano-pop border, flagged. The April 2017 single streams via the F.A.M.E. cut linked here, whose Sony copyright line spans 2017 and 2018. The Marc Anthony salsa version exists and was left alone.

Comeback economics: Zion & Lennox hold their classic era on the committed 2000s list, then cut Otra Vez with J Balvin for Warner Music Latina's Motivan2 in September 2016 and claimed the new wave too — a 2016 original under this list's strict decade cut, not a revival. Balvin murmurs the opening verse like a secret; Zion's nasal tenor takes the chorus up an octave.

Pina Records placed Fanática Sensual on Love And Sex in September 2014, and it became the mid-decade's sleeper — six hundred million streams with no crossover guest anywhere. A music-box synth line tinkles over the softest dembow on this list while Chencho and Maldy alternate bars; Chencho Corleone's later run of Bad Bunny features starts making sense right here.

Label matchmaking that worked: Pina paired NATTI NATASHA, for years the lone woman in Don Omar's Orfanato camp, with Ozuna at his 2017 peak. Criminal runs on call-and-response — every verse a provocation, every answer landing on the title word. Released August 18, 2017 — Spotify dates its own copy September 1 — and the video's outlaw-couple framing pushed it past two billion YouTube views.

Kemosabe Records, Dr. Luke's Sony imprint, put out Mayores on July 14, 2017 — which is how a Mexican-American pop singer handed Bad Bunny his first big mainstream look. A muted brass loop carries the chorus while Becky G plays the whole older-man scandal completely deadpan. Border case toward urbano pop, flagged, and the premise did the viral work itself.

Early-decade time capsule: Algo Me Gusta De Ti, from Machete Music's Líderes in 2012, drafts Chris Brown and T-Pain and lifts its dembow verses into a gleaming EDM synth chorus — the Anglo-crossover experiment the genre ran before learning the world would come to it instead. Wisin & Yandel's 2000s peaks stay on the committed 2000s list.