Daddy Yankee, father of reggaeton, is named person of the year for 2026 by the Latin Grammys

Reggaeton reaches new heights of influence. This Tuesday, the Latin Recording Academy, which awards the Latin Grammy Awards, has announced that the Puerto Rican musician Daddy Yankee, father of reggaeton, will be recognized with the honor of Person of the Year of 2026. An important honor that artists such as Raphael have received (this past 2025, in an emotional gala), Carlos Vives, Alejandro Sanz, Shakira, Caetano Veloso, Julio Iglesias, Maná, Rubén Blades, Laura Pausini, Joan Manuel Serrat, Plácido Domingo, Ricky Martín or Juan Gabriel. The award will be awarded on November 11 at a dinner held in Las Vegas.

Of the 26 artists recognized by the Academy with this honor, the highest in Latin music, Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez (his real name), 50, is the first from the reggaeton genre to achieve this, and also the third Puerto Rican, after Marc Anthony in 2016 and Ricky Martin in 2006. With this award for the performer of the successful Gasolina and co-creator of Despacito, the Latin Grammys take a turn in their recognition, demonstrating the immense variety of Latin music, going from honoring a classic soloist with enormous local breadth like Raphael to doing so with Daddy Yankee, a benchmark for millennials and pioneer of a current and historically disdained genre such as reggaeton.

Daddy Yankee explains the origin of the word reggaetón and how he came up with it
“This recognition by the Latin Recording Academy is a dream come true,” the artist explained in a statement. “It means a lot because it represents more than just a successful career; it is the recognition of years of discipline, struggle, faith and commitment to our culture,” he said, showing off his roots. “Receiving something like this is honoring Puerto Rico, honoring all Latinos and, specifically, the entire generation that believed in our music when no one else understood it.” For his part, the CEO of the Academy, Manuel Abud, explained that “Daddy Yankee has been a key figure in the global rise of Latin music”: “His leadership, discipline and vision opened the doors to an entire genre and inspired an entire generation of creators, and today he remains just as relevant.”

Daddy Yankee is considered the creator of reggaeton (or reggaeton, in the original) and its greatest exponent for more than 20 years. This musical genre, born in Puerto Rico and today listened to by billions of people around the world – Bad Bunny, who also wears it as his flag, was in 2025 the most listened to artist globally, with almost 20 billion views on Spotify – emerged in a homemade and informal way in humble neighborhoods of the Caribbean island, and was initially discredited and persecuted.

Daddy Yankee and Bizarrap
Daddy Yankee and Bizarrap sing at halftime of an NFL game between the Washington Commanders and the Miami Dolphins held at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, in November 2025.
Florence Tan Jun (Getty Images)
In these years, Daddy Yankee has become its greatest exponent. First with Nicky Jam and then alone and with lots of collaborations, he has released a dozen albums, he has made a dozen tours, he has released enormous hits such as Gasolina and Despacito themselves, but also Lo Que Pasó, Pasó, donde Estan Las Gatas, Ella Me Levantó, Yo Voy, Con Calma, Called of Emergency, La Santa and Soltera, among many other songs. He has won seven Latin Grammys, for which he has had 32 nominations; In the general Grammys he has been nominated five times.

A few months ago, when asked by Billboard magazine how he felt the first time he heard that genre, reggaeton, he answered, very clearly: “How so? We created it.” In fact, he explained in a talk with streamer Ibai Llanos that he was the one who named the genre. “I had the opportunity to name it on a Playero mixtape,” he said, referring to a mix created by his colleague in 1990, more than 35 years ago. “The craziest thing is that it was the first time I did freestyle with Playero, the first time I met him, I did the freestyle and we named him,” he said. According to him, it was a kind of reggae, but bigger, hence the play on words, as he told the Spanish YouTuber: “Because of the augmentative, which comes from here, from Spain. Cabeza, Cabezón; reggae, reggaetón,” he explained. “We started mentioning the genre and then everyone embraced it. It was amazing how far we’ve come.”

Daddy Yankee has had an eventful career, especially in recent years. In March 2022 he announced that he decided to retire from the stage to fully dedicate himself to his Christian faith. “I was able to tour the world for years, win many awards, applause and praise, but I realized something that the Bible says: ‘What good is it to a man if he gains the whole world if he loses his soul?’” he stated in his last concert, which he held in December 2023. “For this reason, tonight, I recognize and I am not ashamed to tell the entire world that Jesus lives in me and that I will live for Him.”

Daddy Yankee and Mireddys González
Daddy Yankee and his then-wife, Mireddys González, at an event in Tampa, Florida, in January 2023.
Cliff Welch (Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
A year and a half later, Ayala Rodríguez came out of retirement, with a song in July 2025, of course, with a Christian theme, dedicated to Jesus and called Sonríele. He released the song not as Daddy Yankee, but under the acronym DY, since for some time he had a major legal dispute with his ex-wife, Mireddys González, with whom he was married for almost three decades and has three children.

In December 2024, and while they were in the middle of the divorce process, the singer sued his wife and her sister, Ayeicha Gónzalez Castellanos. He claimed that both had made transfers worth up to $100 million from the singer’s corporate accounts to their personal ones, of course without the musician’s knowledge or authorization. A couple of weeks later they reached a mutual agreement declaring that he was “the only official representative of the companies” and that, for a month, the $75 million of both entities were “untouchable.”

But three months later, in March 2025, Daddy Yankee sued them for violations of fiduciary duties, breach of contract and damages, as well as for hiding information and destroying evidence, and demanded compensation of $250 million. Also at the end of December of last year, the singer sued Mireddys González again, this time along with his former manager, producer Raphy Pina, for a “coordinated attack” and for defrauding him for almost a decade, and for posing as the composer of some of his songs to receive money from the rights to said songs. He demands at least three million dollars from them.