"Dura" (; English: "Hot") is a single by Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee from his upcoming studio album El Disco Duro. On January 18, 2018, El Cartel Records released "Dura" and its music video, directed by Carlos Pérez, filmed in Los Angeles and based on 1990s style and visuals. The song was written by Daddy Yankee, Juan Rivera, Luis Romero, and Urbani Mota, and was produced by Los Evo Jedis. A remix version featuring Becky G, Bad Bunny and Natti Natasha was released on April 27, 2018.
The single has been described as an uptempo reggaeton track with reggae influences and lyrics about a good looking woman. Commercially, the song topped the charts of 14 countries and reached the top 10 of five others. In the United States, "Dura" peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number two on the Hot Latin Songs chart. The track garnered Daddy Yankee his first Latin Grammy Award for Best Urban Song at the 19th Latin Grammy Awards.
Background
"Dura" was written by Daddy Yankee, Juan Rivera Vázquez ("Gaby Music"), Luis "Rome" Romero, and Urbani Mota Cedeño ("DJ Urba"), and was produced by Puerto Rican production duo Los Evo Jedis, composed by DJ Urba and Rome, who had previously worked with Daddy Yankee on "Shaky Shaky" (2016).
On January 4, 2018, Suzette Fernandez of Billboard announced that Daddy Yankee's first single of 2018 would be "a new song called 'Dura'", scheduled to be released on the same month. The following day, Daddy Yankee posted on his Instagram account that he was "putting the finishing touches to [his] new single" and that "January will be interesting." According to Daddy Yankee, it is "an amusing song" that includes "reggae and old schools sounds, and melts with the current musical influence." He wrote on an Instagram post that "the modern and the retro world collide on a song" and that it was inspired by his musical influences from the beginnings of his career. He also stated that the track "harks back to the rhythm and nostalgia for music of the late 1980s and early 1990s, that essence of reggae that inspired reggaeton."
Shortly after the release of the single, Daddy Yankee initiated a campaign on Instagram named #DuraChallenge, encouraging fans to film themselves dancing to the track. Puerto Rican newspaper Primera Hora reported that #DuraChallenge has inspired more than 82,000 Instagram videos as of March 6, 2018, starred by "aspiring dancers, children, top class models, and people of the Third Age."
Composition
"Dura" is an uptempo reggaeton song with a length of three minutes and twenty seconds, and uses 50s progression. Billboards Marjua Estevez described the lyrics as "a tender-yet-thirsty ode to the girl Daddy's got his eyes on." She wrote about the song as "Daddy Yankee [kicking] it old-school while singing praises to a love jones." Estevez also clarified that the word "dura" (Spanish for "hard") refers to "a way of saying someone looks hot" in the context of the song.
Release and reception
"Dura" was made available for digital download on January 18, 2018, by El Cartel Records under exclusive license to Universal Music Latin. Due to the song having been filtered on the Internet, Daddy Yankee was forced to release it ahead of schedule.
Writing for Billboard, Suzette Fernandez described "Dura" as a track that "takes you back to the old reggaeton." An editor of The Straits Times stated that the song "returns to early reggaeton without the pop melodies that mega-stars such as Shakira, Enrique Iglesias or 'Despacito' co-writer Luis Fonsi deployed to bring the genre to the Anglo pop world." Writing for Cosmopolitan France, Loïse Delacotte described the song as having a "fast and nagging rhythm, dancing, viral choreography, a 90s-style pop music video, and lyrics relatively easy to memorize," and also added that "you will love and then hate it."
Accolades
Commercial performance
In the United States, the single peaked at number two on the US Hot Latin Songs chart on March 10, 2018, becoming Daddy Yankee's 15th top five and 23rd top 10 title on the list. The song also peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 15, 2018, becoming his ninth entry and fifth highest peak on the chart. It also peaked at number one on the US Latin Digital Songs and Latin Airplay charts, and at number three on the US Latin Streaming Songs chart. "Dura" was the second best-selling and third most-streamed Latin song of the first half of 2018, with 120,000 downloads sold and 198,437,000 audio and video streams. It was the third best-performing single of 2018 on the Hot Latin Songs chart, being the highest-ranking track of those released during that year.