Timothy Saccenti

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This week's Voice takes a look at how Pitbull rode a bullish multimedia campaign to a level of chart success and celebrity that far exceeds what he accomplished during reggaeton's heyday. It's every bit as heartening as it is surprising. When you consider the other acts who have fashioned a similar career arc—a brief but substantial peak, a productive but highly ignored valley and improbable rebirth in an admittedly cratered economy—I welcome Pitbull's rebirth more than that of Kid Rock, Train or Cake.

Which is not to overstate the idea that Pitbull went totally incognito in the period between reggaeton's height and the present day—singles with the Ying Yang Twins and Pharrell did fairly decently, while his Spanish-language records anchored him and earned him a slew of Latino Billboard awards. But in the post-reggaeton moment of 2006, he might have been best known in some circles for this very publication's claim that he was better than Nas. Granted, this took place during the lead-up to Hip Hop Is Dead, so that sort of accolade could've just as easily been granted to the likes of Annuals or Brightblack Morning Light and still have had a high degree of accuracy. It's also worth noting that Nas isn't mentioned in that piece anywhere after the title, so he could've been replaced by the likes of Pearl Jam or Red Hot Chili Peppers or any other '90s titan who was making a dreadfully dull album in 2006 merely by being themselves.

Both kept relatively busy in the years since then, and they've been on about equal footing: Pitbull may have been the one making the records entirely in Spanish, but they were much easier to comprehend than Nas' indefensible Untitled. And now, both are in a position where their Q ratings are at a peak—Shakira's shaking her ass in Pitbull's new video, and Nas has heads thinking he could at least recapture the glory of It Was Written—so if only for giggles and shits, it's worth asking the same question again, right?

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