X Ultima Vez

X Ultima Vez — Daddy Yankee and Bad Bunny Close a Chapter

Two Eras, One Collaboration

Sometime in the spring of 2022, two figures who between them had arguably done more to install reggaeton as a genuinely global genre than anyone else alive stepped into the same project. Daddy Yankee was the godfather, the artist whose work in the 1990s and early 2000s had built the architecture that everyone else was building on; Bad Bunny was the inheritor and reinventor, the figure who had taken that architecture and expanded it into something that could comfortably claim the position of the most-streamed artist on earth.

The title says it all: X Ultima Vez means "one last time," and it arrived in the context of Daddy Yankee's announced retirement from music. The collaboration carried the emotional weight of a handoff, a generational acknowledgment between the man who built the table and the man who had extended it into a banquet hall.

The Sound of a Legacy Moment

The production is a generous, warm piece of reggaeton rooted firmly in the classic mid-tempo romantic tradition of the genre: the dembow rhythm grounding everything, the arrangements lush enough to feel like celebration without abandoning the intimacy that has always made reggaeton's love songs work. Daddy Yankee sounds entirely at ease within it, which makes sense; this is music built from the same DNA as the records that made his name.

Bad Bunny's contribution operates in a different register, his vocal approach looser and more contemporary, a demonstration of the stylistic distance between the two artists that also underlines how much continuity exists beneath the surface differences. They are clearly from the same tradition.

Three Weeks on the Hot 100

The chart performance of X Ultima Vez reflected the specific dynamics of a Spanish-language record in 2022. The track debuted at number 73 on April 9, 2022, its opening-week position representing the core streaming activity of both artists' Latin fanbase; it held for a total of three weeks on the Hot 100. Those numbers underrepresent the record's significance within Latin music, where it performed considerably more strongly on format-specific charts, and the YouTube view count of 100 million offers a better picture of its actual global reach.

The relatively brief Hot 100 run is a reflection of how that chart is weighted toward English-language content in its methodology, rather than a commentary on the song's actual cultural footprint.

Daddy Yankee's Farewell

To understand X Ultima Vez properly, you need to hold the retirement context. Daddy Yankee's announcement that he was stepping away from music marked the end of a career that had spanned three decades and reshaped the global entertainment landscape in ways that are still being fully understood. His final album, Legendaddy, of which this was a part, was an attempt to close that chapter with grace and with celebration rather than diminishment.

Choosing to share that closing chapter with Bad Bunny was a statement about continuity, about the passing of something to hands capable of holding it.

The Meaning of an Era Closing

For listeners who had grown up with Daddy Yankee's catalog, X Ultima Vez carried an emotion that chart positions cannot measure: the feeling of watching someone who shaped your musical world take their final bow. The song's romantic warmth made it feel like a love letter not just to Bad Bunny or to any specific relationship but to reggaeton itself, to the genre and community that had been Yankee's home and life's work for thirty years.

Put it on and you will hear what a graceful ending sounds like. They don't all come this generously constructed.

“X Ultima Vez” — Daddy Yankee & Bad Bunny's singular moment on the 2020s charts.