The reputed rebel of reggaeton

Puerto Rico’s Tego Calderon appeared to be doing his best last week during a tour swing through Southern California to live up to his reputation as the rebellious rapper of reggaeton. He did so by snubbing the press -- as if he didn’t care in the least about participating in publicity efforts or even in countering speculation that a three-year lapse since his latest album of new material signals a career in decline.

Calderon first bypassed Spanish-language TV reporters by failing to show up backstage for anticipated interviews during a major multi-act reggaeton show at the Forum. Then he gave equal time to the English-language media, walking away from a TV crew poised to put him live on Fox and UPN for their 11 o’clock news shows. Calderon decided it wasn’t worth hanging around for 15 more minutes waiting for his segment and another shot at spreading his fame as one of the most respected artist in reggaeton -- a field that doesn’t get much critical respect.

So it was almost anticlimactic when a reporter arrived for a scheduled 5 p.m. interview the next day and the rapper himself unceremoniously answered the door of his modest airport hotel suite. Far from acting rude or temperamental, Calderon apologized for the still-untended bed. Noticing a maid in the hallway who had arrived to make up the room, Calderon politely asked in Spanish if she didn’t mind working while he was still there.

“Oh, no,” said the maid with a coquettish smile. “I would really like that.”

The champion of the underdog eased his slight frame into an arm chair for a 45-minute interview that revealed a thoughtful, articulate and likable artist with deeply held principles informing his often challenging, sometimes angry music. He sported a shirt with an outline of the Americas, a beaded Santeria bracelet and a stylish cap like those worn by Depression-era newsboys. Asked about his reputation for being difficult, the 34-year-old singer with the bushy Afro and the gap-toothed smile answered with a hoarse laugh.

“A lot of people have created that image around me mostly because of my style of conducting business and my way of defending what’s mine, who I am and what I believe,” he said in Spanish with a thick Puerto Rican accent. “I say whatever I want to say and I don’t go by the normal rules of business. But if you respect me, I respect you.”

He’s gotten respect from English-speaking hip-hop acts, having done guest stints on tracks by 50 Cent and Wyclef Jean and on a remix of Fat Joe’s “Lean Back.”

But the singer’s insistence on doing things his way has come at a price.

He has turned down multimillion-dollar offers to sign with a major label in order to keep control of his music on his own imprint, Jiggiri Records, distributed worldwide by Atlantic. (His next studio album is due in the spring.) And earlier this year, he publicly rejected an offer to appear in ads for rapper P. Diddy’s clothing line, Sean Paul, because of reports that the firm has used Central American sweatshops.

From the start, Calderon has played the part of the reluctant celebrity. With his roots in late ‘80s Latino hip-hop, he didn’t even like reggaeton when it first appeared on the Puerto Rican underground scene in the 1990s. He criticized the nascent style as a boring rip-off of Jamaican dancehall music with Spanish lyrics.

“At the beginning, there was too much caryaqueo in reggaeton,” he said, using a Spanglish slang word for carjacking. “They just stole songs from the Jamaicans. And I couldn’t respect that because there was no creativity in it.”

He didn’t like it, that is, until he tried dancing it. He got hooked at a club named Hollywood in Old San Juan.

“The dance just captivated me; it’s so sensual,” he said, referring to the music’s provocative move called el perreo, or doggie dance. “I danced the whole night and thought, ‘No wonder this is so popular. I gotta do reggaeton.’ ”

His first reggaeton song was aptly called “Cosa Buena” (Good Thing), from 2001.

Surprisingly, Calderon’s music has appeared on numerous compilations but he has released only one studio album in his 15-year career, 2003’s “El Abayarde,” a title taken from his nickname, a term used in Puerto Rico to identify a type of stinging ant and particularly mischievous kids. The more recently released “El Enemy de los Guasibiri” is a compilation of older numbers previously released on mix tapes and albums with other artists.

Produced by Elias de Leon, “Abayarde” yielded several hits in reggaeton’s standard party mold, such as “Pa’ Que Retozen,” “Guasa, Guasa” and “Dominicana.” But it’s critically admired for its unusual use of authentic Afro-Borinquen rhythms and its challenging themes dealing with racism, political corruption and religion.

The album contains what Calderon considers the best song he’s ever written, “Loiza.” Named after his hometown, a predominantly black enclave outside San Juan, the song uses distinctive Puerto Rican rhythms to underscore its searing indictment of the town’s “shameful history” of racism as a black ghetto for the descendants of African slaves.

“You changed your chains for handcuffs,” writes Calderon, who told the Village Voice earlier this year that he had spent two years in jail for weapon and assault crimes before he found fame.

The song is meant to denounce the status of blacks as “second-class Latinos,” Calderon says, an issue that is rarely discussed openly in Latin America. Even his fellow Afro-Latinos don’t want to hear about it, the songwriter says.

“It’s my most profound song, but it’s not the public’s favorite,” he says with a tone of resignation. “Young people are just not interested. I don’t even think they understand what I’m talking about. They just want to dance and be content. That’s the problem with blacks in our countries. We’re immune to being mistreated.”

The rapper’s mother, Pilar Rosario, who wrote poetry and worked as a teacher, was always correcting his Spanish. His father, Esteban Calderon, who sang and played percussion in a neighborhood salsa band, worked as an administrator in a public health department. He has one younger sister, Kenya, who now helps manage his career.

He recalls growing up in a close, happy home. But as an adult, he has faced heartache and division in his own family, centering on a custody battle over his 4-year-old daughter, Ebony. He addresses the issue in a song on his upcoming album, “El Subestimado” (The Underdog). The track is called “Odios” (Hatreds), and it’s so intense that people have advised him not to release it.

“Maybe it won’t be good for my relationship with her mother, but I want to leave a clear record of how I feel so when my daughter grows up she’ll listen and understand what her father had to say.... I want her to say, ‘Look, my father really did care about me.’ ”

As a genre, reggaeton needs to keep addressing real issues that people face in their families, neighborhoods and workplaces, says the artist, an admirer of the late Afro-Puerto Rican salsa star Ismael Rivera. Like salsa, it runs the danger of losing its base audience as it gets more successful and more disconnected from its hardscrabble urban roots.

Calderon’s future hinges heavily on the success of his upcoming album. Some say the gap between releases has hurt him. Perhaps a sign of that is the late cancellation of Sunday’s Naviton Blast show, headlined by Calderon, at the Gibson Amphitheatre. Promoters say the show came too soon after the sold-out Forum concert, and they plan to reschedule after the release of Calderon’s new album.

As for predictions of his own downfall, Calderon invokes his new CD’s title and warns he shouldn’t be underestimated.

“All eyes are on me now with the new record,” he says. “People are doubting. ‘Tego is finished. Tego is gone.’ Everybody wants to be where I have been. That’s how it is: Step aside so I can take your place, as the song says, “Quitate tu pa ponerme yo ... .

“But I’m not going to give them the pleasure.”