Can I add one thing to Matt DeLong’s Daddy Yankee post? When I went to Iraqi Kurdistan in January 2006, Daddy Yankee’s porny hit “Gasolina” was, for some inexplicable reason, ubiquitous. Somehow Daddy Yankee was the sound of the Erbil streets. I wrote about it for Open Democracy:

The gas-hustlers have a comfort, though – chilly as it may be in the face of a security crackdown. Wafting through the airwaves and onto the streets of Erbil is an unlikely palliative speaking directly to the Kurdish imagination in this current moment of netherworldly nationhood: reggaetón. At precisely the right moment of national confusion, this hybrid confection of Jamaican dancehall reggae and Latin lyrical thuggishness is musing to northern Iraq about the liberating possibilities of gasolina. In a bizarre but tangible sense, the peshmergas’ status as Erbil street bosses has competition from a San Juan rapper named Daddy Yankee.

Yeah, like I can explain that.

Crossposted to Tha Streak.