CD Review: Los Cocorocos

Los Cocorocos cooks up a tasty album using some of Puerto Rico's best salseros, reggaeton artists and adds a dollop of hip hop. The CD stirs all this together with a mixture of classic salsa numbers and new, original tracks. It heats up the room as it cooks and presents us with an hour of great musical fusion.

Listen

The setting is the 70s clubs that thrived throughout the Caribbean. Salsa was the beat in the street in those days and, while salsa is still popular in the Caribbean areas, those 1970s club hoppers are fast approaching 60 and have been replaced with clubbers preferring a more contemporary urban sound. So it seems the record's producers have taken some of the older, classic salsa numbers and updated them with an urban sensibility while adding some original tracks to the mix.

To do this, they've taken a classic salsa number like "Dos Jueyes", which was a Celia Cruz/Willie Colon hit in the Fania day and paired up rapper Zion and salsa's Domingo Quinones on the updated version. Tego Calderon and Victor Manuelle duet on "Che Che Cole", a Hector Lavoe standard. Pedro Bull, John Eric and Tito Nieves collaborate on "Los Gorditos", and of course, Gilberto Santa Rosa and a salsa-rific Don Omar on "Los Hombres Tienen La Culpa".

There are also original tracks, and other great artists: Voltio, Papo Rosario, Mista, La Symphonia, etc.

Not all musical fusions are successful, but salsa and reggaeton really seem to work well together, probably due to the electric energy that is the trademark of both genres. Los Cocorocos presents the best of this type of music with some of the finest Puerto Rican artists performing today.

With music this good, it should get some of those old club goers off the couch and back into the clubs.