Latin trap is Spanish-language rap built on US trap production, meaning 808 bass, triplet hi-hats and slow, half-time drums, and delivered with the rap-singing and slang of Puerto Rico’s reggaeton scene. It took shape in Puerto Rico in the 2010s, with roots argued back to the 2000s, and Bad Bunny carried it to the global mainstream. It is one of the Spanish-speaking branches on the rap subgenres map.
Table of Contents
The sound in four parts
The drums come from Atlanta. The hi-hats roll in triplets, the kick is a long 808 that often doubles as the bass line, and the pulse is half-time, so a track feels slow even when the hats are racing. That is the same chassis as trap.
The voice comes from the island. Per Wikipedia’s Latin trap entry, vocals mix rapping and singing, usually with Auto-Tune, in Spanish or Spanglish. Lyrics lean on street life, sex and money, the same territory as its US cousin.
The melody tends to be minor-key and sparse, a loop with room around it. The attitude is darker and more deadpan than a club record. Noriel, one of the Trap Capos rappers, told Remezcla the music was meant to help listeners relax rather than dance.
Latin trap vs reggaeton
This is the question people actually search, so here is the short answer. Reggaeton runs on dembow, a syncopated kick-and-snare pattern you can feel in your shoulders. Latin trap runs on trap drum programming with no dembow underneath.
Production guides put reggaeton at roughly 90 to 100 BPM and Latin trap at roughly 65 to 85 BPM in half-time. Treat those as ballparks, because tempo counting varies by producer.
The catch is that the split is by track, not by artist. Bad Bunny, Ozuna and Anuel AA have all made both, and plenty of hits blend the two. Is Bad Bunny trap or reggaeton? Both, depending on the song. Start from the drums, not the artist’s name. For the other side of the comparison, there is reggaeton, the genre trap grew up beside.
Where Latin trap came from, 2007 to 2016
Nobody agrees on a start date, and I think that is honest. The usual markers are “El Pistolón” in 2007, a posse cut led by Arcángel and De La Ghetto, and De La Ghetto’s own claim to have been in the style by 2005 or 2006. Arcángel is widely described as a pioneer. Reggaeton artists were reaching for trap drums before anyone had a name for the hybrid.
New York has a claim too, and it gets skipped. Messiah grew up in Harlem, per Remezcla’s profile of Dominican New York’s Latin trap scene. By 2014 he was remixing US club records in Spanish for DJ Flipstar, starting with Rich Homie Quan’s “Type of Way,” which became “No Se Siente Bien.” His “Sí Ta Bien” followed in 2014. He argues that the New York scene paved the way for the Puerto Rican one. You can disagree on the order of events, but he was there early.
In Puerto Rico, Wikipedia notes that around 2014 Alvaro Diaz, Myke Towers and Fuete Billete were posting early Latin trap tracks online. The infrastructure arrived next. DJ Luian and Mambo Kingz, the producers behind most of the wave, run the Hear This Music label. In February 2016 the label released “La Ocasión,” with De La Ghetto, Arcángel, Ozuna and Anuel AA. Ozuna and Anuel have both credited it with taking the sound international.
That same year came Trap Capos: Season 1, a compilation series, not a collective, featuring Anuel AA, Bryant Myers and Noriel. Remezcla ties the genre’s 2016 growth partly to it. Myers is the hard one to pin down. His “Esclava” remix, with Anuel AA among the guests, is often called his breakout, but sources date it anywhere from 2014 to 2016, and some treat “Cuatro Babys” with Maluma, Noriel and Juhn as the real breakthrough. I would not hang the genre’s birth on either record.
Farruko, meanwhile, moved from reggaeton toward trap, and Wikipedia lists “Ella y Yo” among the early hits.
The crossover, 2016 to 2018
Bad Bunny is the person most readers mean when they say Latin trap, and his path was odd. His solo “Diles” went up on SoundCloud in 2016 while he worked a grocery job in Vega Baja, and DJ Luian signed him to Hear This Music after hearing it. A late-2016 single, “Soy Peor,” is tagged Latin trap on Wikipedia, and a 2017 remix added J Balvin, Ozuna and Arcángel.
Ozuna’s debut Odisea arrived in 2017. Anuel AA, arrested on gun charges in 2016, spent two years and three months in prison, and his Real Hasta la Muerte was released at midnight on July 17, 2018, the day he was due out, per Remezcla. It was recorded entirely while he served his sentence. The album leaned toward radio-friendly pop-reggaeton, which tells you where the market was heading.
Bad Bunny’s debut X 100pre followed at Christmas 2018, with reggaeton producer Tainy on the credits. By then the line between the two genres was mostly a marketing question.
After 2020, and what is not Latin trap
The subgenre split. Bad Bunny went wide, with pop, reggaeton and everything between. Then in October 2023 he returned to the sound with Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana. Rolling Stone’s review found it carried by the music even if thematically repetitive, and one track, “THUNDER Y LIGHTNING” with Eladio Carrión, experiments with drill. Young Miko, whose 2022 album Trap Kitty put her on the Latin trap scene, reached the Hot 100 in 2023 with Feid on “Classy 101” and with Bad Bunny on “Fina,” which shows the lane widening.
One correction, because search results blur it. Corridos tumbados, the Mexican style Peso Pluma made famous, is not Latin trap. It is a trap-influenced take on the traditional corrido, as NPR’s review of his album Éxodo lays out. It is Mexican, with different rhythmic roots, and it is a separate story from Puerto Rico’s.
FAQ
Who started Latin trap? No one person did. Arcángel and De La Ghetto’s circle, Messiah in New York, and the Hear This Music producers all have a claim, and the date is disputed between 2005 and 2007. The cleanest statement is that Puerto Rico’s artists and producers shaped it, with New York in the room early.
Is Bad Bunny Latin trap or reggaeton? Both. His early records such as “Soy Peor” are Latin trap, his later albums cross genres, and Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana went back to trap.
What’s the difference between Latin trap and reggaeton? Dembow against 808 trap drums, and a slower half-time feel. The artists overlap, so judge each track.
Who is the god of Latin trap? There is no official title, and the fans argue it. Mine is a split vote. Arcángel for the lineage, Anuel AA for the prison-to-chart story, Bad Bunny for the reach. Tell me yours.
Put on “La Ocasión,” then “Soy Peor,” then the Nadie Sabe opener, and you will hear seven years of the genre in three tracks.
— Davood Tavakoli, Cyphlore