Rakata
by Wisin & Yandel
How to study this song
Learning “Rakata” means 75 entries at B1- — 38 Spanish words, 6 adjectives and 31 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. The glossary is the place to begin — agua, ahora and amigas are the song’s keywords. This one leans on its verbs: 31 distinct forms against 6 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level part of the list will already be familiar; the rest is what closes the gap.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| agua | water | acqua | eau | água | water | Wasser |
Adjectives
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| callejero | street, streetwise | di strada | de la rue | de rua | van de straat | von der Straße, straßenerprobt |
This card holds 5 more adjectives. You meet them when you play the song.
Verb forms
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| salte | get out (tú) | togliti di mezzo | dégage | sai daí | ga weg | geh weg (du) |
What this song teaches you
Level · B1-
- Vocabulary words
- 38
- Adjectives
- 6
- Word combos
- 8
- Expressions
- 9
- Verb forms
- 31
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Rakata» came out on 27 January 2005 on Machete Music and is usually described as the first single that made Wisin & Yandel a chart act rather than an underground name. The duo come from Cayey, a town in the mountains of central Puerto Rico: Wisin was born Juan Luis Morera in December 1978 and Yandel was born Llandel Veguilla in January 1977, and they had been working together since 1998. By 2005 they were well known on the island’s reggaeton circuit, but this track took them onto Billboard’s charts in the United States and into clubs far beyond the Caribbean.
The song was the lead single of «Mas Flow 2», a compilation released in February 2005 and assembled by Luny Tunes, the production team that shaped much of the genre’s sound in those years. It was produced by Luny Tunes together with Nely, known as «El Arma Secreta», who also shares the writing credit with Wisin and Yandel. In November of the same year it reappeared on the duo’s own album «Pa’l Mundo», which went to number one on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums and carried two more big hits with it. The track is short, under three minutes, and built on the dembow rhythm that defines reggaeton.
There is not much of a story in the lyrics. It is a dance-floor song: the singers tell any man who is not dancing with a particular woman to get out of the way, describe her as a dancer who dominates the floor and has far more rivals than friends, and fill the gaps with shouts and boasts. Like a great deal of reggaeton from that period it is full of double meanings, and the title itself is not a dictionary word but a percussive sound used as the hook. The last part of the recording is spoken rather than sung, a list of names, nicknames and claims about sales and history of the kind that producers and artists of the genre used as a signature.
For a learner, the value of the song is its Puerto Rican street Spanish. Two features of Caribbean pronunciation are audible without any effort: the word for “for” is cut down to a single syllable, and the -d- between vowels in past participles disappears, so that a form ending in -ado is pronounced and written as -ao. Both are everyday speech across the Caribbean and much of Spain’s south, and both confuse students who have only ever seen the full written forms. The song also uses local vocabulary that no textbook teaches, such as a domino term from the island’s favourite table game, and a word that normally means “screen” but in Puerto Rico is used for an earring or a piercing.