Spinnin landing a Nicky Jam feature is the most Spinnin move imaginable, and Te Conocí is exactly the radio-facing Latin-dance crossover you would sketch on a napkin from that sentence. Zenar handles the production, a glossy four-four engineered to slot between reggaeton on one playlist and festival house on another, and Nicky Jam does what he has done for fifteen years, selling a hook in Spanish with far more charisma than the beat underneath him strictly deserves. And that is the whole problem. The track is competent and sunny and completely safe, built to travel rather than to land, and you can hear a committee decision in every bar of it. Nicky Jam is the only element in here with a pulse. He could have phoned this vocal in and probably did, and it still carries the entire thing, which tells you everything about the distance between the star and the song. It will do enormous numbers at pool parties and I will not think about it once after November. A forgettable record rescued, barely, by a man who has nothing left to prove and clearly knew it going in.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.