King Changó - The Return of El Santo

From their birth on New York City’s mean streets, King Chango quickly established themselves at the top of Latin rock’s international heap with their 1996 Luaka Bop debut. Their mix of hard-charging ska, Latin rhythm, and roots reggae converted virgin audiences into true believers from Venezuela to Mexico, Spain, and Japan; “Melting Pot” the single and video off of their first album saw regular rotation on MTV Latino and M2.

Now, with the Return of El Santo, King Chango — named for the Afro-Cuban god of war — pay tribute to another Latin bruiser with a new musical vision. Like radioactive embryos in the petridish of New York, King Chango have gone godzilla size. Leaner and meaner, streetwise and funky, encompassing the full plate of pop culture from trip-hop dubadelica (“Lil Sister”) to sexy love ballads (“Sin Ti”) to full-bore punk attacks (“Full Time Business”), Latin drum ‘n’ bass (“Tu Vera”), and straight up Venezuelan roots and culture on “Brujeria,” El Santo manages to make the free-for-all of “Melting Pot” seem tame.

In the years since King Chango’s debut, the world of Latin alternative music has exploded. The so-called Latin Boom in mainstream U.S. pop has nothing on a worldwide revolution that’s seen whole genres, from Latin electronica and to bilingual hip-hop, spring up from Argentina, Mexico,Puerto Rico, and beyond. King Chango proved themselves to be in the vanguard of a post modern, mix-n-match aestetic– a multicultural, coed band of Venezuelans, Asians, Dominicans, Nuyoricans, and more made something new out of traditional music from mariachi to mambo, dub to cumbia. El Santo features like-minded guests including the Ozomatli horn section on “Full Time Business” and Nuyorican rapper Baby Powa (of MTV’s Lyricists Lounge fame).