J Balvin Heads to the Club on ‘Rayo’

J Balvin took the two years following the release of 2021’s José to retreat from the public eye and spend more time with his family. And for understandable reasons: the Jose album cycle was plagued by controversy, a cancelled tour, and an uncompromising verbal assault from hip-hop en español’s resident curmudgeon. When he decided to get back to work, he hit the club. Decamping to London, José spent his days recording at Abbey Road and RAK Studios and nights on the dancefloor, clubhopping and testing demos on unsuspecting crowds. The result is a new album, Rayo, that leans heavily into pop reggaetón and the sounds of the club, a PG-13 perreo that’s as palatable as it is predictable. 

Balvin’s superpower has long been his ear for talent: He’s a genre tourist of the highest class, constantly scouring global charts for new sounds and new voices. His song with norteño superstar Carin Leon is his first exploration into the diverse regional Mexican sounds dominating the charts. But their collaborative track “Stoker” is a disappointingly bland acoustic ballad that has more in common with pop country than música mexicana, and the rest of Rayo finds him treading mostly familiar ground with radio-ready popetón jams and collaborators from Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Spain. He’s said the album is rooted in nostalgic notions, reminiscent of a time when he would sell records out of the trunk of the VW Golf featured on the album’s cover. The MIDI melody on the Zion collaboration “Lobo” certainly sounds lifted from one of the Puerto Rican reggaetonero’s 2000’s era hits, but much of Rayo feels contemporary. 

Lyrically, Rayo lacks depth, failing to say much beyond the garden variety boasts of sex, drugs, and having a good time. Of course, such a POV isn’t inherently boring; his collaborative album with Bad Bunny (Oasis) managed to make the fun-in-the-sun vibe way more interesting. But while that record benefitted from a tongue-in-cheek tone, a shorter runtime, and, well, Bad Bunny, Rayo feels bloated and more self-serious than it has any right to be. 

There are flashes of brilliance — the pummeling beat switch near the 2-minute mark of “Polve de tu Vida,” the hypnotic analog warble of the synths on “Doblexxó,” the propulsive energy of “Gaga” and its four-on-the-floor cosmic house beat — that nod to the London club scene he immersed himself in while recording Rayo. The production is generally slick and polished, which suits him. José has always been quite far removed from the raw, chaotic energy of early reggaetón, and no matter how hard he tries, he’s more convincing as a sensitive romantic than a dick-swinging lothario. It’s why “3 Noches,” an ode to yearning that marries the dembow riddim to a twinkling afropop melody, works so well, while the comparatively hard-edged “Swat” feels incongruous from the moment Balvin’s verse startss

Rayo is a perfectly serviceable reggaetón album, with no egregious misses, but no obvious hits. It’s clearly the record he wanted to make, and after millions of streams, sold-out stadium shows, and countless awards, he has little left to prove. Yet on this, his seventh album, one glaring question does remain: Does J Balvin have anything left to say?