Bienvenidos al Party - Quiero Bailar by Ivy Queen
In 2002, Ivy Queen came out with the song “Quiero Bailar” (I Want to Dance)
So who is Ivy Queen?
Ivy queen is a rapper, MC, reggaetonera, La Diva, professional perrero leader and artist from Puerto Rico
She got her start in music by joining a music collective called The Noise in the 90s.
Ivy Queen
What is Quiero Bailar About?
Remember clubs??? If you do, remember how there’s ALWAYS THAT ONE CHUMP who gets WAY TO CLOSE TO YOU during the perrero?
It’s basically about calling that one chump and tying it with a message about consent.
Ivy Queen explains this more in this mini documentary
More Cool Stuff I Found
This dope interview she did with NPR where she goes into great detail about her history as an artist and what she thinks about reggaeton today
There are tons of academic papers out there about feminism and reggaeton and plenty of them reference this song.
There’s even this twitter thread by user @ValuRulu who lists reggaeton songs from Black women artists and says “reggaeton has always been feminist”
Last Note
Even though, I was not old enlough to remember this song when it first came out, I can tell this song reached commercial success from what I’ve been reading
Fast forward to today and we are seeing reggaeton going through this evolution and popularity breakthrough but carrying the same message that Ivy Queen and other women have been talking about in the 90s. We’re also seeing more artists emerging from formal record companies and within the indie scene
While everything in music and in the world is changing, Ivy Queen proves that when you take a risk and go against what’s expected, a revolution will follow