Ivy Queen vs. La Queen

So I came across this video at ElCorillord.com that asks the question:"Entonces qual tu prefieres La Queen o a Ivy Queen?"

My mind immediately jumped to Jillian Baez's illuminating piece “En mi imperio”: Competing discourses of agency in Ivy Queen’s reggaetón" for the Centro Journal.

peep the abstract...

"This paper argues for a more complex understanding of the intersection of gender and representation in reggaetón. Using the music and career trajectory of the female artist Ivy Queen as a case study, the author demonstrates how her music and self-representation in interviews simultaneously functions as a potential site of female agency within a male dominated sphere while being constrained by transnational music industries and Latin American norms of femininity. More specifically, the essay offers a critical discourse analysis of the music, performances, interviews, and press reception of female reggaetón artist, Ivy Queen, otherwise known as the “queen of reggaetón,” to understand how she and the media construct her subjectivity and agency. Ultimately, the author argues that as reggaetón´s most popular female icon, Ivy Queen straddles a tenuous space in which her hybrid subjectivity is complex and at times seemingly contradictory"

Her paper is off the hook and I strongly encourage folks to read it (you can google it and find a pdf). But checking out that video definitely demonstrates a lot of what Baez discusses in her piece mainly how can we read the differences in La Queen's aesthetic performance versus Ivy's, and what factors influenced the change. But don't take my word for it read the article for yourself!