Calle 13 – “Entren Los Que Quieran” (2010)

The
first three by Puerto Rican duo Calle 13 were all masterworks of music. Their
self-titled first production was highly influenced by reggaeton which was
probably the most popular musical genre in Latin America at its time; their
second piece Residente o Visitante continued to have a few reggaeton
influences but it was highly more inclined to alternative hip hop and Latin
sounds; their third production Los de Atras Vienen Conmigo completely
said “goodbye” to reggaeton and focused on other musical genres such as
alternative hip hop, cumbia, salsa and even electro; this new production, like
its predecessor, doesn’t have any contact whatsoever with reggaeton and instead
focuses on other world-like genres where there can be found influences from the
usual hip hop, Hawaii, India, Broadway, rock music, merengue and even Western
cinema.

I
had been waiting for a long time to see what would be Calle 13’s new album and
what types of music would this new production explore seeing that in each album
new musical genres were being taken as influences. When it finally came out I
was very excited, I mean quickly went out, bought it and when I put it in my
car I was, first of all, laughing my ass off but then I was completely amazed. Calle 13 just never seizes
to amaze me. This album is way more personal and it focuses more on social
issues like political, death and the use of guns which can be seen in songs
like “La Bala”, “Vamo’ A Portarnos Mal”, “Preparame La Cena” and “Digo Lo Que
Pienso”. A few artists that helped the duo complete this masterpiece are Omar
Rodriguez-Lopez, of The Mars Volta, Seun Kuti and Toto la Momposina. Overall
the album is just a masterwork of music and it has to be one of the greatest
productions from any Latin American and overall artist.

Rating:
5 stars out of 5.

Hello Everybody My Name is Fernando but You Can Call Me Fen or Pan Con Ajo Whichever You Prefer

Well how can I start? Well first of all I was born in San
German, Puerto Rico to a great family, if I do say so myself, who named me
Fernando Enrique Eduardo Correa Gonzalez which makes me and my little brother
the two people with the longest names in my family, which is pretty awesome
because it makes a bit easier for when I have to choose a name for my male
children, if I ever have any boys.

About
my childhood I am going to say this. Back when I was a child I used to play
lots of basketball and I loved Michael Jordan so that was the first thing I
wanted to be. I wanted to be the greatest basketball player that ever lived.
After that when I got into intermediate school I got really, really interested
in the arts especially in drawing, film, literature and video games (which many
people do not consider art but I do). During this time of my life I started to
draw a bunch of characters which I am now currently developing as I keep
learning and reading. Another thing I did a lot during this time of my life was
write songs for imaginary bands that my friend Alex and I used to create along
with our friend Carlos Ruben. I really do not remember how many bands exactly
did we create but I believe that the main ones were “Radioactive” which would
have been a punk rock band and the other one would be an unnamed heavy metal
band.

After all this efforts to make bands
failed we decided to focus on our filmmaking abilities and so inspired by the
television show “Jackass” and all its predecessors, follow-ups and spin-offs we
decided to make a long feature film called “Dumbass: The Movie” which would
have us doing stupid stunts and pranks. We did this film along with our other
friends Jose, Ahmad, Carlos Alexis, Jordan, Keno and Louis. Another thing we
did was change the title for it, we decided to call it “Caribbean Death
Rampage” because that’s what we called ourselves as a crew. It was a fun
experience but we did it at an attempt to get famous through the internet, we
never did get famous although we did get an email offering to be in a
television show which was going to feature people doing extreme stuff but by
the time this email came around we were all in college and our interests in
this type of filmmaking had changed.

After doing this film I decided to
focus on writing short stories, short films, poetry, drawing and also filming
my own short films. So basically in high school what I did was focus on what I
really, really wanted to do as a profession, an artist specialized in film and
literature. My last year of high school was also when I met my love, Michele.

Now
in college my life has completely changed because back when I was younger I did
not use to read a lot but now in college my minded has expanded greatly and I
have found out that one must develop every single aspect that he or she can.
After taking only but a year and a half of college education I have discovered
how much the arts and how much I love humanities, history, philosophy,
psychology and many other topics, the most surprising one being architecture.

So
there was a bit of my life story and the following list is composed of just a
few things that I like, you know hobbies and interests: film, music, drama,
literature, all sorts of graphic and plastic arts, photography, exercising,
playing basketball and football, spending time with my family and friends,
reading, watching movies, listening to music, finding out about new people,
artists and things. There is a bunch of more stuff but this is just a very
brief list of stuff that I am into.