The quest for numero uno

Spanish-language music isn't known for shooting up the mainstream music charts. Sure, Los Del Rio enjoyed a novelty hit with ''Macarena" in 1996. Daddy Yankee found spectacular success with the song ''Gasolina," which boosted sales of the CD he released last year, ''Barrio Fino," to 834,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. And this year Shakira had luck with ''Fijacion Oral Vol. 1," which has sold 610,000 copies with the help of her crossover smash ''La Tortura." But those examples are exceptions.

The lack of hits hasn't stopped major record labels from betting on reggaeton, the Spanish-language genre that mixes reggae and hip-hop. In the past year, a multitude of record companies have set up a bevy of new label imprints under the Latin urban music umbrella. The question dangling over reggaeton stars such as Tego Calderon, Don Omar, and Daddy Yankee as they prepare to release new albums is whether they will follow the lead of Shakira and Ricky Martin and record in English in order to make themselves palatable to a wider American audience.

''I don't think anyone wants to do that," says DJ Buddha, a local DJ who has developed relationships with some of reggaeton's best-selling artists through his popular mixtapes.

But Leila Cobo, Billboard magazine's bureau chief for Miami and Latin America, doubts these artists can achieve a high level of success unless they embrace English. ''If you want to do some kind of crossover," Cobo says, ''usually you do need to have some language connection. Reggaeton is just the big exception to all the rules. And even so, these artists are doing collaborations with people who are singing in English, and that's going to prove to be their entryway."

Using an English-speaking artist certainly helped Yankee. His hit ''Gasolina" had been slowly building a following, but the song started getting hip-hop station airplay after the release of the ''Gasolina" remix featuring Atlanta rapper Lil Jon. Yankee also sings and raps in English on the ''Barrio Fino" cut ''Like You."

The new reggaeton duo Yaga & Mackie tentatively embrace the English language on their new CD ''La Moda" by featuring guest vocals by the Spanish Harlem singing duo Nina Sky, Boston rapper and cofounder of The Source magazine Ray ''Benzino" Scott, and reggaeton stars such as Calderon, Omar, and Zion y Lennox. The duo scored CD reviews in the hip-hop magazines The Source and Vibe, and that exposure could give Yaga & Mackie the crossover boost needed to sell records to the non-Latino audience.

But the feeling among some people in the industry is that Omar, whose hit ''Reggaeton Latino" is getting heavy airplay locally on WJMN-FM (94.5) as well as in cities such as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, will not be able to expand his audience if he continues to release solely Spanish-language songs.

''We play Don Omar," says ''Cadillac" Jack McCartney, program director at WJMN, ''but I don't see that on a national level his songs are going to be as big as Shakira's, only because she crosses more age spans."

Fixating on EnglishThe success of ''Fijacion Oral" followed on the heels of the English-language ''Laundry Service," the Colombian's 2002 introduction to US audiences. The sales of that CD helped Shakira develop a broad fan base. She became mainstream enough to garner a performance berth on last month's MTV ''Video Music Awards," where she sang ''La Tortura."

Even with the success of ''Fijacion Oral," Shakira plans to follow up that July release next month with ''Oral Fixation, Vol. 2," which will be filled with English-language songs. The move will help the artist appease the rest of her English-speaking fans.

''You certainly have people who don't speak Spanish buying albums in Spanish," says Cobo, ''but I think they're the exception, not the rule. I think if you went to see a concert by [the Latin rock group] Mana, and people said, 'Oh, there were people who spoke no Spanish,' well, yeah, there might be 20, but I'm sure it's not half the auditorium."

Omar will also cater to the English speakers unwilling to purchase Spanish-language albums with the Nov. 22 release of his CD, ''The Hitman." The remix album will pair his hit Spanish-language reggaeton songs with a succession of popular, English-speaking hip-hop and pop artists, including Fat Joe and NORE, who appear on a remix of ''Reggaeton Latino."

''What we're trying to do with Don Omar, since we already have a strong Latin base, is let the world know he works with mainstream artists as well, not just Latin artists," says Gus Lopez, the head of Universal Music Group's Latin Urban label, Machete Music, which will co-release the Omar CD.

Not that everyone believes that an artist needs some element of English in order to sell well. In the case of reggaeton, the beat may just be enough. ''If you listen to Yaga & Mackie lyrically, it's definitely all about having fun," says Gerardo Vergara, marketing director at Univision Records, the music arm of the Spanish-language television channel. ''But musically it's something that you just can't stop -- it moves you instantly. That's the funny thing. You wouldn't expect Anglo people would be so open to new rhythms. You would think they would be more content driven. But in this case they buy it for the music, just the pure fun dancing flavor of it."

With more than 41 million Latinos living in this country and an international Latin audience willing to purchase the music, is the crossover audience even important for a Spanish-language artist?

''You do need it," Cobo says. ''If you're an artist and all you want to do is play concerts, no. But if you're a label and want to sell albums, yeah. Because Latin America is very, very pirated."

Aside from helping to foil concerns about illegally sold music, crossover status also helps artists get their CDs classified under genres broader than Latin. So instead of finding a foreign-language CD solely in the Latin music section of a record store, you can find it displayed on the bestseller rack or in the pop music section, where there's more consumer foot traffic.

It's the possibility of boosting waning record sales that is making music executives look hungrily at popular Spanish-language artists. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Latin albums grew almost 18 percent in the first six months of this year, compared to a decline of almost 8 percent in overall album sales during the same period. That massive jump in Latin music sales explains why Atlantic Records has signed Calderon, and why Roc-A-Fella, Wu-Tang, and Bad Boy records are among the labels setting up Latin urban imprints.

The record industry, says McCartney, is courting ''these extremely passionate artists with a smaller number of [fans]. Whereas I think before, they were trying to get the artists who are the most passionate with the most number of [fans]. [Companies] are realizing that their business of selling records is dwindling and people are much more into downloading music, so they need to constantly reinvent new ways to generate record sales."

At the same time, as the Hispanic population grows, it's changing the face of who's tuning into urban radio.

''It's not like people listening to the contemporary rock station," says Cobo, ''who would probably freak out if they heard a song in Spanish. The people who listen to urban music, a lot of them are Latin anyway, even if they don't speak Spanish all the time, so [hearing a Spanish-language song] is not alien to them."

Crossing overYet the questions linger about whether these changes will translate into genre crossing sales. Cobo wrote a story in Billboard last month about how mainstream artists such as J. Lo, R. Kelly and Alicia Keys are clamoring for reggaeton remixes of their popular songs. Keys did a reggaeton remix of her hit ''Karma." Kelly went even further, cutting the original song, ''Burn It Up" with the reggaeton duo Wisin & Yandel. The song is featured on Kelly's ''TP.3 Reloaded."

Stations are playing reggaeton-flavored music, Cobo says, but it's still not strong enough to chart high in the mainstream.

The payoff could be outstanding, though, for reggaeton up-and-comers Wisin & Yandel, says Lopez, president of Machete Music, which will release the duo's Spanish-language CD, ''Pa'l Mundo," on Nov. 8. Wisin & Yandel just shot a video for ''Burn It Up" with Kelly in Chicago last month. If the video becomes popular on MTV, VH1, and BET, that exposure could give the duo's CD a huge sales boost among Latinos and non-Latinos.

Does Cobo envision a day when a Daddy Yankee CD cracks the top five of the Billboard albums chart and a reggaeton song by Tego Calderon hits No. 1?

''If you have a proper track," says Cobo, ''and it's really pushed, why not?"

McCartney is not quite as optimistic. ''I think [reggaeton] can do big sales; I just don't think it will be as big as an English-speaking album in America," he says. ''At the end of the day, the same album in English and Spanish, I think if people can only buy one . . . in this country it's more likely to be English."