J Balvin's "Perra" video and what it says about his effort to make reggaeton mainstream

He's got some work to do to be a good representative of the genre

J Balvin and Tokischa recently faced heavy criticism for the sexist and racist imagery in the music video for their song “Perra.” The video was removed from YouTube without comment a few days ago.

I haven’t been able to see the full video but based on screencaps and commentary about it, the video features Balvin, a white Colombian, walking two leashed Black women. The faces of the women and other Black people in the video were made up to resemble dogs and Tokischa, a Black woman, was also shown on all fours in a dog house.

“I want to say sorry to everyone who felt offended, especially to women and the Black community. That's not part of what I’ve always expressed. I'm about tolerance, love and inclusivity,” Balvin said in an Instagram story on Sunday, over a week after he took down the video. “I also always like to support new artists. In this case Tokischa, a woman who supports her people, her community and also empowers women.”

In the Instagram story, he also confirms he was the one who took down the music video.

The video has been called both racist and sexist, which Los Angeles Times and, somewhat surprisingly, the Daily Mail, accurately described as misogynoir — a specific type of discrimination against Black women that is based on both race and gender. 

Misogynoir is linked to the idea of intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, that says the experience of Black women can’t be understood in terms of being either just a woman or just Black but instead has to be understood by examining how both identities overlap and often lead to compounded discrimination. Intersectionality has also been expanded to analyze and explain the overlapping effects of not just race and gender, but also other identities and backgrounds that together combine to amplify the discrimination people face.

To better understand the faults of Balvin and Tokischa’s video, one needs to look at it through an intersectional lens. Perreo, a subgenre of reggaeton with a dance style based around grinding, has a long history of controversy for its explicitly sexual themes and for often being degrading to women. Yet recently it’s gained more acceptance as the genre moves away (even if slowly) from the misogyny and focuses instead on celebrating sexuality and dancing. 

This is where “Perra” can be lauded. It’s a song between a man and a woman, each openly singing about their sexual desires to each other, without either person degrading the other. It’s about sexual liberation and, while the lyrics are risqué, they’re not offensive. 

Balvin, who has openly talked about his efforts to expand reggaeton’s reach outside Latin America, betrays this move towards sexual liberation by giving in to the racist and sexist themes that have been too prevalent in reggaeton and the mainstream white market. In propagating misogynoir, any good that came from the song is erased. 

Latinxs with influence like Balvin have an opportunity to help dismantle the racial binary and hierarchy in America and much of the western world, especially as a popular aspect of Latinx culture gains widespread appeal within white society. As one of the artists best positioned to introduce reggaeton to a global audience, Balvin has an obligation to push back against the misogynoir that is prevalent in white-dominated spaces.

Reggaeton is likely to be even further whitewashed and could even be appropriated by whites the way rock, hip hop, country, blues, (really all music) was. Though it has the Spanish-language buffer that protects it to a degree from such appropriation, it’s a buffer that could be taken down, especially as reggaeton becomes even more global. 

Hell, Balvin himself is proof of how reggaeton can be whitewashed when introduced to new audiences. There is no Black reggaeton artist that has achieved his level of fame. While Balvin can be commended for providing Black artists more recognition by collaborating with them, one has to question what the industry and consumers value when Black artists need to collaborate with white ones to gain notoriety in a musical genre they created. Balvin has boasted about his historic accomplishment of being the first Latinx Lollapalooza headliner but, once again, what does it say about reggaeton’s mainstream acceptance when the first person to accomplish this feat is a white artist? 

Balvin, and other artists that are part of the new wave of a more globalized reggaeton, need to ask themselves what exactly they are accomplishing with their efforts to make reggaeton more mainstream. And also, what kind of reggaeton will be considered safe enough for a white audience? (Maybe the kind that could be labeled as the musical equivalent of a hot dog cart or is safe enough for Pikachu and Spongebob?)

With the “Perra” video, Balvin showed that he’s still struggling to find the right way to express the progress that reggaeton has made without further spreading the discrimination it has promoted in the past. That’s only going to get tougher as he tries to give the genre a wider audience.

And it’s clear that Balvin isn’t truly taking ownership of what happened because he took down the video quietly, and it took a week of added criticism for him to address it.

Balvin has said he’s dedicated to “putting Reggaeton on the map” and he can claim some credit for its expanding popularity. Yet he still falls short of making reggaeton as inclusive — and thus as good — as it could be. By failing to portray reggaeton in a way that doesn’t discriminate or erase the Black people that made the genre what it is, he is effectively appropriating a Black genre and whitewashing it for a mainstream audience. 

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