Around 2021-2023, RKT was having its golden era in Argentina. At a time when Latin music was increasingly converging around reggaeton’s formulas, RKT felt refreshingly local, creative, and with lots of potential to add something new to the Latin music boom’s menu. The homegrown urban genre born from the fusion of cumbia villera, reggaeton, hip-hop and the raw energy of Buenos Aires’ neighborhood parties was dominating charts and clubs in Argentina.
It wasn’t merely another regional variation of an established sound; it was unmistakably Argentine. It seemed like the apex of something really special: I believed RKT and other distinctive Argentine music could become the next big thing in Latin music.
Among the genre’s defining names was La Joaqui, a former freestyle battle MC who found in RKT the ideal canvas for a reinvention that brought her artistic strengths into full focus. She adopted the raspy, almost cartoonishly exaggerated vocal timbre that would become her signature and embraced a more sensual stage persona. However, all the rest were just the qualities that had been there all along: La Joaqui’s sharp flow, smart rhymes, and an instinct for commanding attention in a scene largely dominated by male performers and producers.
Then, RKT’s hype cooled down. As cuarteto-based hits climbed the charts, RKT gradually ceded its place in the mainstream conversation. RKT artists didn’t stop putting out music, but even theirs felt less inspired. La Joaqui herself flirted with a rebranding by defining herself (merely) as a “cumbia singer” on her Instagram page bio, which suggested she could be starting a transition to survive the “death” of RKT.
Could RKT ever capture the public’s imagination the way it used to during its lively, post-pandemic days? It may be too soon to answer that, but La Joaqui’s last album, Electra, shows that the genre, and herself too, still have a lot to show. If anyone was going to make a convincing case for RKT’s second act, it had to be her.
It’s part of her intention: Electra’s opening track is titled “TURR0LOGIA”, a playful neologism that elevates “turreo”—the Argentine youth culture and nightlife aesthetic intertwined with RKT—to the status of a science. It’s a statement: turreo is alive and well, and La Joaqui will be your guide to it. “TURR0LOGIA” begins with the beat and heat that made RKT so irresistible in the first place, yet the beat changes way too soon, especially for an album’s first track. The following song, “KAMIKASE”, follows the same path but features stronger cumbia elements.
Speaking of RKT’s rhythmic matrices, La Joaqui traces a sort of regressus ad infinitum by circling RKT back to reggaeton, and circles reggaeton back to dembow. There’s an interpolative nod to Lorna’s “Papi chulo” in “TURR0LOGIA”; a direct shout-out to Tego Calderón in “Kamikase”; and the fourth track, “KANAM”, is assertively dembow.
Electra isn’t only a “RKT is back” statement though. Industrial club music emerges as one of the album’s defining threads too, pushing the project beyond straightforward revivalism or early 2020s nostalgia. That’s evidenced in “Paleta”, the first non-RKT track of the album. It features none less than Six Sex, the Argentine underground dance music sensation whose unique blend of reggaeton and dancehall with electronic beats is gaining fame as “perreo rave” or “ravetón”.
Electra’s electro moments find their apex in “Tokame”, which interpolates Benny Benassi’s “Satisfaction” while flirting with guaracha. A horn-played driving hook gives “Tokame” a festival-ready status that could easily be followed by Farruko’s 2021 global hit “Pepas” on a DJ set.
Getting back from dance music to RKT, “Mírame” brings back one of the genre’s most celebrated duos by featuring Callejero Fino. Hearing his voice at the beginning of “Mírame” is like travelling back to 2022, when his solo track “Tu turrito” was dominating Argentina. After that, he and La Joaqui collaborated many times. “Mírame” shows that their chemistry remains intact.
Electra’s last two tracks lean towards La Joaqui’s most romantic side in the soft cumbia “Fingia” (featuring Argentine pop singer Angela Torres) and the corrido tumbado “Nada personal” (featuring Mexican singer Gabito Ballesteros).
The album’s growing musical palette does not come at the expense of La Joaqui’s and RKT’s identity. That has always been one of RKT’s most captivating traits: embracing its unmistakably Argentine roots (although the genre never really had big crossover opportunities to test its genuineness). La Joaqui, for example, makes a point of singing in a strong Argentine accent (with its clipped cadence and emphasis on the rolled R’s), and using Argentine slang. She does not attempt to flatten her diction into a pan-Latin neutrality.
Rather than attempting to recreate the sound that dominated Argentina a few years ago, Electra imagines what RKT can become after its first commercial wave. It encompasses other musical genres, it’s true; but it also refuses to treat the RKT movement as a relic.
Although it’s nice to see La Joaqui expanding her musical spectrum, it’s also kind of a relief to see that RKT remains her creative home. She could easily have chased another reinvention; her trajectory in the Argentine music industry established her as a survivor capable of rising over and over. However, watching La Joaqui ensure that RKT has a future and consolidate her place as the undisputed queen of a genre so deeply rooted in Argentine culture is a far more interesting story.