While their 2004 debut Motivando a la Yal embraced the rapid-fire flows and spare, bare-bones ferocity of early reggaetón, they tempered it with songs that drew on bachata (“Bachatéalo” and “Bandida”) and salsa (“Doncella”) and concentrated on love. (Lennox became an underground favorite thanks to an appearance on Hector “El Father”’s 2002 Godfather mixtape.) But having arrived in the wake of the ’90s, when censorship largely kept reggaetón off the radio, Zion & Lennox shied away from the tales of violence and gunplay that characterized the genre’s first wave. Zion’s sweet tenor met its polar opposite in Lennox’s authoritative, gruff bass delivery, which hews satisfyingly close to the genre’s dancehall roots. In the early 2000s, they tried their hand at music, contributing tracks to compilations including Luny Tunes’ deeply influential Mas Flow.
Félix Ortiz (Zion) and Gabriel Pizzaro (Lennox) grew up as neighbors who shared a love of hip-hop, reggaetón, and dancehall. The duo formed in 2000 in Carolina, Puerto Rico. Zion & Lennox were early pioneers of the romantic lyricism that would win reggaetón space on the airwaves and ultimately a global profile-setting the template for generations of future reggaetón stars.
