This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

I know you've heard this beat before.

It's everywhere.

And don't lie, it makes you want to dance.

This rhythm, boom, chica-boom, chicka-boom, chicka-boom, chicka-boom, chicka-boom, chicka-boom,

is the heartbeat of regga-tone, one of the most successful musical genres on the planet right now.

Artists like Bad Bunny, Carol G., and Daddy Yankee have sold billions of records and play to packed stadiums worldwide.

But where did the reggaeton beat come from and what makes it so infectious?

It gets people moving. There's something really fundamental to it that makes us want to move.

And I think as a result, it's not too surprising that it has been a huge part of dance music,

music that people dance to for, gosh, probably centuries, maybe millennia, right?

We don't really know.

That's Wayne Marshall, a musicologist and co-editor of a book all about reggaeton.

A rhythm as fundamental and primal and danceable as the reggaeton beat feels like it's been around forever.

And maybe it has. Variations on the regga tone beat can be it's been around forever, and maybe it has.

Variations on the reggaeton beat can be traced back to Western African drumming traditions

that go back hundreds, if not thousands of years.

But now, two Jamaican musicians are making a bold claim that they invented the reggaeton

beat on a specific track they recorded in 1989.

And more importantly, they claim that they own this beat.

The Jamaican musicians have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit naming every major reggaeton artist

...