Mixing it up in the street

THE first track on Calle 13’s new album sounds like a lovely Baroque chorale -- unless one speaks Spanish, in which case it becomes immediately evident that it’s an ornate canon of the filthiest words in Puerto Rican street slang. That segues into a blend of hip-hop beats and Argentine tango, with the catchy chorus, “Turn up the satanic music!”

The combination of musical breadth and in-your-face humor made Calle 13 the Latin music sensation of 2006, winning the group three Latin Grammys and making it the hottest new act in the Caribbean hip-hop style known as reggaeton.

Except that the pair of stepbrothers who make up Calle 13 deny that their music is reggaeton. “We’re more of an urban alternative band,” says rapper and lyricist Rene Perez (a.k.a. Residente), the elder brother at 29. “I use a lot of black humor and double meanings, but I’m sending messages, a lot of social stuff. Reggaeton is more to party and for the discos.”

Says Eduardo Cabra (a.k.a. Visitante), 28, “I think they just need to categorize us somehow. But I started playing piano at 6 years old, classical music. Then when I was 17, I went to the street, playing keyboards and saxophone in ska bands, and then I switched to Afro Caribbean music and music from Brazil. So I use reggaeton as a tool, but it’s mixed up with all the other rhythms I’ve been hearing.”

Indeed, the new album, “Residente o Visitante,” establishes the duo as one of the most musically adventurous groups in Latin hip-hop -- maybe in hip-hop, period. It uses tango, cumbia, Peruvian Andean music and surf guitar, and guest stars include reggaeton idol Tego Calderon, Spanish rapper La Mala Rodriguez and the Cuban hip-hop trio Orishas.

Perez’s lyrics are equally adventurous. Most noted for their outrageous sexuality, they also full of smart wordplay and keen social sensibility. As he raps on the new album, he’s “a rebel with a cause.” Even his obscenity has a gender-stretching playfulness -- he cites the feminist theorist Judith Butler as an influence -- and other themes include illegal immigration and the Puerto Rican independence movement.

“People compare me a lot to Eminem and the Beastie Boys,” he says. “And that’s nice, but we don’t come from the same place. Puerto Rico is very hard-core, in terms of politics, of violence, in every sense. It’s small and everybody knows each other, so you don’t have to live in a ghetto to know what it is to live in a ghetto. If a Puerto Rican goes to school, you have two educations, the college and the street.”

Perez went to the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia and often compares himself to the Harvard-educated salsero Ruben Blades, who also used party music to explore serious issues. “The thing I like about his work is that he’ll give a complicated message using simple words, with a lot of metaphors, in a way that can get to the masses,” Perez explains. “I was in school for eight years, and I was tired of communicating with the same kind of people, college people or people who believe they’re intellectuals.”

Virtually unknown outside of Puerto Rico a year ago, Calle 13, which is on Saturday’s lineup for the Reventon Super Estrella festival in Irvine, is now hitting hard both on the street and in the universities, helped by quirky, well-scripted videos and a stage show featuring a nine-piece band. They tour throughout Latin America, “Residente o Visitante” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin chart last month and a round of European festivals is planned for the summer.

“A lot of things are changing for us,” Perez says. “We are traveling a lot, and after living on an island, we are very affected by that. Now we’re going to extend our music to more countries, we’re going to start opening doors in Europe and I’d like to move to New York for a while. It’s kind of a dream to be able to write in English the same way I can in Spanish, if I could get all the slang.”

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Reventon Super Estrella

What: KSSE-FM (107.1) festival featuring Jennifer Lopez, Jaguares, Mikel Erentxun, Reyli, Reik, La 5ta Estacion, Belinda, Moderatto, Yuridia and Calle 13.

Where: Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine

When: 3 p.m. Saturday

Price: $40 to $244 (sold out)

Info: www.ticketmaster.com