Don Omar
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
His album debut, The Last Don, was a landmark for the eggaeton movement, which was then just beginning to make inroads into the lucrative stateside market. The album featured extensive production work by Luny Tunes and Eliel, who would quickly become the styles go-to hitmakers, the former in particular, and it spawned a few hit records, including Intocable and Dile. Beyond this album, Omar was scoring further hits with Luny Tunes on their compilation albums, most notably Entre Tú y Yo from Mas Flow and Dale Don Dale from Trayectoria. His biggest hit came on the Chosen Few compilation, though. That hit, Reggaeton Latino, was the perfect anthem -- an empowering rallying call of Latino pride, arriving just as eggaeton was spreading like wildfire throughout the coastal urban centers of the United States in summer 2005. The song was so popular in the U.S. that a remix was quickly issued to further the crossover possibilities. This bilingual remix featured well-known Latino rappers N.O.R.E. and Fat Joe, and it was only the second eggaeton song to get MTV airplay in the States, not to mention the crossover radio airplay it received. The success of Reggaeton Latino affirmed Omars status alongside Daddy Yankee and Tego Calderón as one of eggaetons true leaders, and of them, he was clearly the revolutionary: a man of passion with a voice that sought to uplift his people to brighter days, not unlike what he had sought to do in his previous profession as a preacher, except now with an emphasis on the secular rather than nonsecular, and with a much, much larger following.
