Latina DJs reflect on 10 years of neoperreo: The weirder, the better

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Set us as preferred Amid all the turmoil of 2026, some may yearn to dial the culture back to 2016 — in all its rainbow-saturated, Rio de Janeiro Instagram-filtered glory.Neoperreo, the Latin American genre born of that internet era, turns 10 this year.Artists built it as a reimagining of reggaeton music, by and for femmes and freaks: cis and trans women, as well as the frikis from Latin America’s punk and alt scenes, who never fit the mold.

For them, this cutting-edge sound and the internet community around it offered a lifeline.A decade after the term first circulated, neoperreo (as in, the new perreo) has exapanded from SoundCloud and DIY parties into a global network of artists, DJs and festivals.The genre takes a distinctly techno-infused approach to the dembow rhythm, stripping reggaeton of any acoustic elements and assembling them anew on a laptop to sound colder and faster.With the bass hollowed out and Auto-Tune cranked up, the vocals take on a metallic sheen — as women spit risqué verses claiming their rightful place as subjects, as opposed to the sex objects that men would relegate them to.Both released in 2016, two of the songs that defined the genre early on — Tomasa del Real’s “Bien y Mal” and Ms Nina’s “Tu Sicaria” — pair hooks you can perrear to with beats that sound like they were built in a bedroom, because they actually were.Beyond its sound, the genre created worlds: digital networks where outsiders across the Americas and Europe found each other, and parties where queer, trans and friki Latines could show up exactly as they were.As trans and Latine communities face mounting attacks on their rights and safety, those spaces, alongside the new ones they’ve inspired, keep carrying weight.“It didn’t have a name yet, but it was born from this desire to experiment and create somethin...