E.G.O. / Charly & Johayron

According to the dictionary, ego is an excessive valuation of oneself. According to the Bible, it is pride and God hates it and, according to Freud and his theory of psychoanalysis, it is a partially conscious part of the personality that mediates between the "it", the super ego and the reality of the outside world.

For Charly & Johayron, "the wise man watches his own ego and the fool fights with the ego of others". What they deliver to the public as "Effort"., "Ganas" and "Orden" -initials that make up the title- is a phonogram whose listening reveals more than that.

E.G.O.The duo's first album, released on November 24, is composed of 14 tracks, produced by Ernesto Losa and Cuban Deejays and released by Planet Records.

My listening started earlier, as three of their tracks were already making waves on the street: The most rocky Bandits (feat. Bebeshito), My old lady and Toki Toki (feat. Ja Rulay), which today (December 11) exceed 1.6, 2.1 and 2.8 million plays on YouTube, respectively.

The narrative of the album is not far from the usual narrative of Carlos Coronado and Johayron Amores. When I discovered these guys on Instagram, nasobucos by means of a post-pandemic stage, they were trying to make a living -and people- with videos where they showed a Charly with failures in love and a wise Johayron advising him. Since then I follow their content, which most of the time is far from obscene and uses a language that, even being colloquial, is neither offensive nor denigrating (or simply disguises it well). I wonder what arguments those who accuse the cast of vulgarity will use against the duo.

Bachata Two Friends kicks off the album; a risky move, but undoubtedly effective, for a duo that moves mainly in the urban environment. It is a short and reiterated story of "more than friends", with a touch of complicity. They break their sound proposal with a change that takes us out of the usual in this scene and that I haven't seen since Chacal and Yarkarta, at least not with that strength.

In The Bandits, the pencils and the face that -as the artists also call themselves- summarize in two minutes and 54 seconds the comfort of bachelorhood, without commitments, without ties, because after all, tough guys don't fall in love and, on that line, women fall by themselves; a discourse already told before in the genre. For them, for the time being at least, the one night stand are easier to manage. To prove it, they resort to a videoclip where they "magnify" women -literally, they make them look like giants-, in scenes where the singers bathe in a sink while they play with them, hide behind alcohol bottles or lie down pleasantly on the buttocks of the protagonists. Magically it all ends with a potion that converts them to the size of women (or returns them to their usual state, who knows).

My old ladythe other of the advance singles, talks about the impossibilities that would have to happen for one to forget the love of a mother. "For my part there are no complaints", they sing, for mine either; after all, as they themselves would say, "a song to mommy is not done every day".

Toki Toki -the production that seems to have more acceptance, according to its numbers on YouTube- turns out to be a song planned to bring together the two most popular duos of the urban scene (Charly & Johayron and Fixty Ordara & Ja Rulay), which ended up being a feat. with Ja Rulay after their recent separation. We can thus hear a Toki Toki with a taste of Shaky Shaky that, although it takes me for a couple of seconds to Daddy Yankee, it returns me to the solar, to the aguaje of the neighborhood, with a clave, in a swerve and a boot of catchy rhythms.

I then meet with That's where I come fromIt is probably a reflection of Johayron's childhood in Centro Habana and Carlos' in Santo Suárez. Getting out of the neighborhood is complicated, achieving success, even more so. "Ay, yo coroné/ ahhh /ehh/ que cosa é", they sing, with good timba in the background, an invitation to make the blood run stronger, you can hardly contain a pasillo.

Geishathe seventh song of the album, I squeal for its simplicity; the cut to the pretty woman Is not dedicating oneself to prostitution also an exercise of freedom and choice? One might wonder to what extent artists symbolically reproduce the prejudices they criticize. In any case, the line between necessity and will is a complex one. That said, I have always believed that genres and music in general have a social function: that of the cast is not precisely to educate.

Piano, trumpets - "rock, paper, scissors"- and it goes out Toxica game to lose and win that alludes to what a couple's relationship can mean for the authors, with a sound that takes us through a quiet track like a bus ride. With this, as with other songs, I feel I am in the story of a neighborhood boy, without privileges (as I was), who falls in love, who gets cheated on, who goes to parties, who gets disillusioned, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, and who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves, who leaves. watercressI guess nothing resembles our times more than the cast.

If anything is missing in E.G.O.In general, they are new collaborations. I was expecting to hear some veterans like El Taiger, Yomil, Los 4, Gente de Zona, Jacob or some of the most popular of the new ones, but in the end they only went to the musicians that are part of the company.

From the production point of view, on the other hand, they didn't take care of repeating sounds, nor of the predictability that some titles turn out to be. It is their first time, and they achieve a decent product. The effort and the order is noticeable. There is potential, followers too. It will probably be a matter of days for some of these songs to be positioned in the charts. tops The style they propose captivates and may penetrate new audiences.

If one thing is clear, it is that they will have plenty of songs to sing in their next tour of the United States; that reguetón, cast, timbatón, cubatón and its derivatives are impregnated in our culture, and that there are people putting their "body" into it.

The authors, in an Instagram post, published a couple of instructions for listening to the album: pour yourself a drink, turn off the light, sit comfortably, put your headphones on full blast, listen to each song without skipping them and think about who to dedicate them to.

In my attempt to understand them, I followed each one of them and I recommend them. We can only wait for the audiovisual delivery, which may make us rethink some criteria. Otherwise, I am convinced of one thing: there is still ego to be eliminated and a lot of Charly & Johayron to exploit.