Bump goes the beat, grind goes the crowd

Free grind.

No, this isn’t the sign you dream of seeing at your local Starbucks. It’s actually the main appeal of the persistent rhythms of reggaeton, the hottest thing in Latino music and which promotes, shall we say, a certain closeness on the dance floor. Right, that kind of grind.

The grooving was heavy offstage and on at the “Reggaeton -- Hip Hop Live” show Sunday night, when Snoop Dogg, the unofficial ambassador of hip-hop, welcomed a delegation of Latino rap and reggaeton artists into the Inglewood Forum.

A dozen acts performed, with the hot reggaeton beats of Rakim y Ken-Y, Voltio and Calle 13 mixing with local Latin hip-hop from Malverde and the rap-a-tat-tat vocal stylings of Chicago rapper Twista. This melding of musical cultures drew its overwhelmingly Latino audience of thousands to its feet for more than four hours.

Reggaeton’s musical hybrid was born in either the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, depending on whom you ask. Through 20 years of evolution it has absorbed reggae, hip-hop, salsa, bomba and Trinidadian soca music, and it has lately bumped English-speaking hip-hop from the MP3s and car stereos of L.A.’s Latino youth.

It’s party music, above all, with an urban music inflection parlayed by its rapped Spanish lyrics. In its latest incarnation, reggaeton broke open in 2004 with the release of Daddy Yankee’s “Barrio Fino” album (and its killer single, “Gasolina”).

But, at its core, the music’s popularity can be ascribed simply to its beat:

Dun ... ka-dun ka. Dun ... ka-dun ka. Dun ... ka-dun ka.

It’s difficult to get across just how maddeningly infectious this reggaeton beat is. It induces a pleasurable trance-like state in mind and body rarely encountered elsewhere.

In this sense, reggaeton could supplant alcohol as a more natural form of social lubrication. It encourages all the free expression, intimacy and fun of sex without the actual sex.

Dance moves including bachata and meneando take over whole parties full of flush-faced Latino youth as they grind in the insistent grip of the beat. In its racier forms, this becomes perreo (from the Spanish word for “dog”) and elicits a hands-on-the-floor “perro-style” configuration.

“It’s good to move your hips,” says Rita Dees, 28, of Inglewood. “It’s the rhythm, the motion in the ocean, baby.” She then demonstrates a few moves in her seat (miraculously, without spilling a drop of her Hennessy and Coke). “This is our free grind,” she says with a smile.

“It’s just the vibe, the style, the fashion, the sound,” says Rita’s brother, Wesley, 17, a hip-hop fan and DJ who started weaving reggaeton stalwarts Tego Calderon and Ivy Queen into his sets after Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” hit the scene. “I started feeling that.”

So have other fans, from kids to adults primarily under 50, who came to the Forum casually dressed to bump it in any space they could find. During the show, girls in bikini tops shake it onstage while Puerto Rican, Mexican and Central American flags are occasionally draped over the speaker banks at the front of the stage.

“It’s just about unity,” says Velvet Dawson, 22, from the Crenshaw district. “If you have people in Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Puerto Rico that look like me or Daddy Yankee that don’t speak English but understand that rhythm, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna do what’s natural for you. You’re gonna put it to a beat that you know with a language that you know. It’s universal. Like rap, it’s universal now.”

After 10 acts, the crowd started flagging a bit.

Then Snoop appeared just before midnight gripping a cordless mike with what looked like a diamond-encrusted hilt in the shape of a marijuana leaf. The fans immediately revived.

“We all the same -- black, brown or white,” Snoop declared before ceding the stage to Daddy Yankee, who sent the crowd home with a pleasantly exhausted glow.

Sales of reggaeton artists’ records may not yet quite compete with those of the hip-hop heavyweights (though L.A. is the biggest market for these acts). But don’t be surprised if you start seeing Daddy Yankee -- like Snoop before him -- show up in things like an “Old School” film sequel, or cellphone ads.

And one last word to the wise: If you do find yourself standing in line at Starbucks, don’t punch up any Yaga & Mackie on the ol’ iPod. Unless you want to make friends real fast.