Yandel

Yandel was just 23 years old when he and fellow reggaetonero Wisin released their debut album, 2000’s Los Reyes del Nuevo Milenio or The Kings of the New Millennium. The title was as prescient as it was audacious: Both solo and alongside Wisin, Yandel has remained one of the reigning figures of 21st-century reggaeton, equally skilled at pioneering new sounds and adapting with the times. Born Llandel Veguilla Malavé in Cayey, Puerto Rico in 1977, Yandel released his solo debut, Quien Contra Mi, in 2004, while the duo’s mixture of Caribbean rhythms and hardcore hip-hop was making them both global superstars. When Wisin & Yandel declared an amicable hiatus, the latter struck off on his own again with 2013’s De Líder a Leyenda, and he has kept refreshing his sound year after year, update after #Update (the title of his 2017 album, and a favorite term of his). In the mid 2010s, Yandel fleshed dembow riddims with EDM drops, flirted with tropical house, and nabbed guest verses from Lil Jon and Future as well as Bad Bunny and Tego Calderón. Then, countering reggaeton’s feature-heavy drift, he pursued a strictly solo course on 2019’s The One. He brought his career full circle with 2020’s Quién Contra Mí 2, on which he united a new generation of rising stars with fellow leaders of the old school. (Always ready with a trick up his sleeve, he also managed to get Snoop Dogg and Rubén Blades on a track together.) What keeps him innovating after all these years is the same hunger that motivated him in the beginning. As he told Apple Music with a laugh,: “I feel like a little boy who is just starting out.”