Miguel Cantos Gómez (SAIKO): Sakura

SAKURA, for all its flaws, is still a decent reggaeton/rap project from one of Spain’s fledgling stars.It can be easy to forget that Spain contributes to the Spanish music scene just as much as the other Spanish-speaking countries of the world. I’m partially to blame for that; when I say a phrase like “Latin rap music,” I like to assume that the listener knows that I’m including Spanish culture at large. “Latin America and Spain” doesn’t roll off the tongue very well, and it’s usually easier to say “Latin music” whenever I’m talking about… you know. Just keep that in mind today. Whenever I say “Latin [whatever],” I am including the places that aren’t situated on the southern half of the Americas. What’s the reason for this preamble? Well, today’s rapper comes to us from the wonderful country of Spain, and he goes by the name of SAIKO.

Miguel Cantos Gómez – who I’ll be referring to as SAIKO for the remainder of this review – has been trappin’ it up in Spain since 2020, at least professionally. SAIKO has actually been rapping for nearly a decade: when he was just 13, Miguel started honing his skills throughout his hometown, Armilla (which sits in the province of Granda). In 2019, he started a rap duo with his brother, who went by the name “Wido.” In case you’re wondering where “SAIKO” comes from, Wido was actually the

inspiration for SAIKO’s nickname. He originally went by the name “Psycho” before Miguel picked the name up later. He rewrote it, as you can see. This all only lasted about a year, though. By the turn of the decade, SAIKO had moved on to the big leagues, and he would get his break in 2023. “Polaris,” a dembow cut with Came Beats, got a remix featuring Feid, Quevedo and Mora, and it’s racked up nearly 270 million Spotify streams since its release. SAIKO’s got some other heavy hitters, though: one of his old cuts, “COSAS QUE NO TE DIJE,” blew up at around the same time; several features he’s done with Myke Towers, Gonzy, Quevedo and Omar Montes have crossed triple digits; and some of the songs from his most recent project are getting tons of streams, too. That album, SAKURA, is what we’ll be talking about today.

SAKURA is SAIKO’s debut album (or maybe his second album, if you’re willing to call his 2023 Saliendo del Planeta EP an album), and it was released on April 26th, 2024. It’

s got a pretty impressive length for a modern reggaeton album; at sixteen tracks and 54 minutes long, it isn’t exactly a sprawling opus, but it’s still a breath of fresh air compared to the countless albums that seem like they go by in a flash. It’s also helped along by the sheer amount of features, as we’ll discuss later. There’s projects out there where the main artist feels like an afterthought on their own album, but that doesn’t happen in SAIKO’s case (check out that Post Malone album if you actually want to hear someone being buried alive by a small colony of features). It also helps that SAKURA is something of a concept album. In a Rolling Stone interview he did earlier this year, SAIKO explained how each of the sixteen songs represent a different planet in his own little world. That Saliendo EP I just mentioned sort of acted as the test drive for SAKURA, even though, according to Miguel, he’s been working on this album since 2021. And there is quite a bit of celestial imagery throughout SAKURA: the song titles, the lyrics, the album cover, and so on. It’s pretty easy to correlate this kind of idea with SAIKO’s meteoric (yes, that’s a pun) rise to stardom (yes, that’s another pun). He’s been enamored with what lies beyond our tiny little rock for quite a while, and SAKURA was the perfect way for him to venture into the cosmos. What did he return with? Let’s see.

SAIKO has been very public about how much support he’s received from his fellow Spaniard and Latin American rappers – I mean, the entire third verse of the opener, “3 CAÍDAS,” is just him giving props to some of his peers: Ñengo Flow, JC Reyes and LOS GREEN LANTERS, Quevedo, DELLAFUENTE, and the rap collective PXXR GVNG. Myke Towers and Hakim also show up on the outro to give SAIKO some extra cred. It’s a cool thing to see. The song itself is one of SAKURA‘s strongest, and it prominently features an extremely bright bugle motif throughout. These horns were actually performed by the Tres Caídas de Triana band in Seville, a very well-known church band from Spain. It doesn’t actually originate from this song, though. These horns were originally on a song SAIKO released last year, “HAPPY 21ST B-DAY SAIKO,” which he never put on streaming services (as far as I’m aware, at least). On that song, the horns are still there, but they’re pitched down and a lot quieter than they are on “3 CAÍDAS.” It’s not just the horns I like, even if they are a bit abrasive. SAIKO puts on a pretty good performance, too; this is one of the straight-rap songs on the album, and once the song really gets going, he’s got a nice flow. I also like his voice quite a lot, even though he very frequently overdoes it with his vocals. I’m fine with it (at least here), but I can absolutely understand how his higher registers might not sit well with some people. SAIKO has a lower, grittier voice that he sometimes settles into, but you’re gonna be hearing him belt his guts out quite a lot. So get used to that. There’s even a bar on here where he does a, dare I say, Duki-ish kind of impression. Whether it’s any good or not I will leave up to you. SAIKO does follow the big man on Twitter, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if this was on purpose.

After the opener, we get the track “LUNA,” which I also think is one of the better cuts on SAKURA. It’s got a lot of these stuttery synths, which go together quite nicely with SAIKO’s singing. He isn’t overdoing it quite as much this time around, so this song might go down a bit easier if you’re more interested in some melodic rap. ULI produced this (and most of the album), and I think the little touches of piano and guitar at certain points add a lot to “LUNA.” DELLAFUENTE also shows up for a solid feature. I still think SAIKO is the star (I’m gonna keep doing these puns, so get used to it) here, but DELLA bridges together the beginning and end of the song nicely, and you’d be missing quite a lot if you took him out.

“BOREAL” is one of the spacier-sounding songs on the album, courtesy of Sky Rompiendo’s production. In one of the stranger creative decisions on this album, “BOREAL” turns into a straight-up drum and bass track after the intro. It’s the only song on SAKURA that even does this, so hey, points for originality, at least. It’s not poorly made, but it’s one of several songs here that I don’t have particularly strong feelings about. I’d probably be a little more negative towards it if the whole album was like this, but the two-ish minutes where SAIKO evolves into his D&B form are fine for what they are. I couldn’t possibly tell you why it’s here in the first place, but there’s far worse on this album.

“HEY BB” is probably the first song where I can start to identify the issues that SAKURA has as a whole. It’s just a run-of-the-mill reggaeton song. It doesn’t sound bad, SAIKO does what he needs to do, and there isn’t anything out of place. It doesn’t iterate on that very much, though, which is an issue we’ll talk more about later. “HEY BB” sort of acts as a glimpse of the just-kind-of-alright reggaeton songs that this album has – and there’s several of them. One thing I can say about this song is that it’s possibly a sequel to “BB ;(” from 2022. I mean, take away the first word and you’ve got the same title, for starters. They’re both about the same kind of relationship troubles that every single reggaeton singer in existence has sung about, too. I don’t know if SAIKO himself has named this the spiritual successor, but I’m willing to bet that these two songs are at least tangentially related.

We’ll get to more of the painfully-average songs later, but for now, here’s one of the better ones: “YO LO SOÑÉ.” If you’ve played the new FIFA- er, sorry, the new FC game, you’ve probably heard this song on the soundtrack. SAIKO actually netted two appearances; his other was the feature he had on J Balvin’s “Gaga.” As for this song, SAIKO gets a feature from Spanish singer Omar Montes, who’s been popping in and out of the reggaeton scene for quite a while now. I haven’t been terribly impressed with the few times I’ve actually heard him, but I’d say he slots into this kind of sound a lot better. It’s also one of the most unique-sounding songs on the album: “YO LO SOÑÉ” starts with some mariachi-esque guitars before transitioning into a more aggressive rap beat. This kind of organic sound hearkens back to the album opener, although these guitars aren’t as loud or as prominent as those horns. It’s one of the best-produced tracks on SAKURA, and it’s one of SAIKO’s best performances, too. The lack of autotune also helps drive home how viciously fluid his rapping is. SAIKO even pokes fun at that concept in the following lines:

Y cuando intentan reírse de mí por el pajarito, ello’ saben que soy millonario

¿Cómo que yo no soy nadie? Pedazo de m*erda, ¿no me ve’ llenando estadio’?

En serio, ¿no te siente’ ridículo diciendo en pleno 2024 que no sería nadie sin el Auto-Tune, bro?

I guess we’ll never know

SAIKO’s very braggy on this song. And rightfully so, in my opinion. The music video for “YO LO SOÑÉ” is a love letter to the UFC, which is another organization that is full of braggadocio and punch (literally, I guess). The title of the song also comes from that world. Fighter Ilia Topuria, in addition to entering the February 2024 UFC Featherweight Championship with an Antonio Banderas mariachi song, repeatedly said the phrase “yo lo soñé” during his walk-up. “I dreamt it,” he said. And dream it he did. Just like how SAIKO announces how successful his album will be before its release at the end of the song, Topuria edited his Instagram bio and preemptively declared himself the winner of UFC 298. Fortunately, he didn’t need to change it. Topuria’s currently 15-0 (as of me writing this), and SAIKO did see a lot of success with this album, so you can safely say that they were both accurate in their bragging.

The remix of “POLARIS” is that song with Feid, Quevedo and Mora I mentioned earlier. As is the case with most other Latin remixes of things, the remix far overshadowed the original song due to the sheer amount of starpower. This doesn’t necessarily translate to a slam dunk of a song, though, because I think this remix is just kind of alright. There are a few interesting elements that it adds on top of the original, but this is one of those remixes that I don’t really think improves on its predecessor. SAIKO could have easily put the original “POLARIS” on this album (again) and I don’t think you’d be missing much. Still, it remains his most popular song in terms of streams, so it clearly resonated with a lot of people.

Now here’s where we start to get a little off track. As we start to move into the middle portion of SAKURA, its biggest flaws start to become more obvious. “COMO SUENAN LAS ESTRELLAS” and “COMETA HALLEY” are where SAIKO’s reggaeton skills start to come into question, and both songs have their own set of problems. “COMO SUENAN” mainly suffers because of SAIKO’s performance – I sure hope you enjoy high-pitched SAIKO, because you’re gonna hear it a lot on this song. I can put up with them in short bursts, but the entire verse in the middle is done in this kind of voice, and it gets pretty grating after a while. It also doesn’t help that this is one of the weaker beats on the album. The next song isn’t much better. “COMETA HALLEY” has a more tolerable SAIKO on it, but it’s let down by a lackluster J Balvin verse and another run-of-the-mill beat. At the very least, it does begin with a pretty sweet violin solo – even if it goes away once the song starts up.

In the largely-unremarkable middle third of SAKURA, the song “NÚMERO TELEFÓNICO” is something of an exception. It’s got one of my favorite beats on the album, and those back-and-forth mallets that come in during the intro make up one of my favorite moments on the entire album. It also helps that I just love Mora’s voice, but, you know, that’s a different thing. The build-up into the first chorus is amazing, and both him and SAIKO compliment the beat very well. It doesn’t do anything all that differently, but this is one of the few moments of SAKURA where the norm works really, really well. It’s elegantly simple.

“SUPERNOVA” is another one of the smash hit pre-release singles, and it’s probably the closest we get to a second D&B-type song on the album. It’s still a reggaeton song at heart, but for the first half of the track, SAIKO almost convinced me that he had done the “BOREAL” thing again. Almost. The song itself is okay. The next track, “LA RIJANA,” is also just okay. It’s got one of the more unique soundscapes thanks to Caleb Calloway, but it’s too short to really go anywhere meaningful. Most of the songs on SAKURA avoid the dreaded “too-short-itis” disease, but this is not one of them. Both of these tracks are part of the “painfully-average” league I mentioned earlier; the latter more so. They’re okay, but they’re not what keeps me coming back.

“ESKELETO” would be one of SAKURA’s best if it wasn’t for Bryant Myers. Actually, no, “ESKELETO” would be one of the best if it wasn’t for the entire second half of the song. It’s very neatly split up into two different halves: SAIKO takes the first half (or what I’ll call the “good half”) of the song, and then Bryant comes in with a key change and not a whole lot of energy. He just doesn’t do a whole lot for me. And that’s kind of a bummer, because if you were to take Bryant out of the song, you just get a great beat and a great showing from SAIKO. Whenever I listen to this song now, I just listen to the first half and then skip the rest due to how little Bryant’s feature adds. I only have “ESKELETO” as high as it is because of how strong SAIKO’s part is. It could have been a highlight on SAKURA, but a misplaced feature means that it isn’t. I still like this song, if that means anything.

Fortunately, the next song is one of SAKURA‘s highlights. “BADGYAL,” in addition to being this album’s most successful hit (ignoring the singles), is also one of its most engaging and entertaining. It’s probably the hardest song here, as well. If you like SAIKO’s bangers, then this is probably the best thing he’s made yet. He also gets a big assist from JC Reyes and Dei V, who both offer some great verses. But it’s the beat that does most of the heavy lifting here. SAIKO, ULI and Came Beats do a phenomenal job at making a hard-hitting reggaeton beat that plays to the strengths of the dudes rapping on it. One thing I would like to briefly mention: if you check the lyrics, you’ll probably notice that “BADGYAL” has absolutely nothing to do with the actual concept of the album. I imagine the title probably gave it away, but in case you really need to know, “BADGYAL” is not about planets. There’s some other songs on this album that aren’t even remotely related to the central idea. I don’t really mind, but I just thought it was worth mentioning. Regardless, it’s a shot of adrenaline that SAKURA desperately needs by this point in the album.

“FINALES DE AGOSTO” and “NANA DEL HILO ROJO” would probably be my least favorite songs if that one from earlier didn’t exist. They have all of the problems that this album’s weakest tracks have – the big one being that there just isn’t really anything interesting about either of them. I do feel kind of bad singling out “FINALES,” since SAIKO seems to regard that one as a personal favorite, but he isn’t very engaging in his more introspective moments. It takes the momentum that “BADGYAL” had and grinds it into dust. These two songs would make for an extremely underwhelming send-off if it wasn’t for the track that actually finishes off the album.

The sixteenth and final song on SAKURA is nothing short of ethereal. “ÁNGEL DE LA GUARDA” contrasts greatly from almost every other song on SAKURA. It isn’t reggaeton, nor is it really a rap song. It’s performed and executed like a ballad: SAIKO slowly sings every line with nothing but a piano and some background fuzz. I wouldn’t exactly call his singing voice “great,” but some autotune makes his verses absolutely gorgeous. I’ve always been a firm believer that autotune is (usually) not a hindrance to singers, and I think that gentle applications of it can produce vocals that rival the greatest vocalists on the planet. I wouldn’t change a thing about SAIKO’s performance. Reading the title (and the (PÓSTUMO) stuck on to the end of it), you can get an idea of what the lyrics are about. I won’t spoil them here, but it’s a touching finale to the album that also ties together the entire concept of SAKURA somewhat. And… I can’t believe I’m about to admit this, but this song made me cry. Not the first time I listened to it, surprisingly enough, but it was when I was just idly sitting and listening to Spotify. It was just at the perfect place and the perfect time for me to get all misty-eyed about it. Things happen, what can I say?

Simply put: “ÁNGEL DE LA GUARDA” is a perfect song. I would not alter a millisecond of it. It’s a soft rose gently placed on top of a decent package of reggaeton and rap. SAKURA won’t go down as one of my favorites from this year, but it has so many little moments of excellence that give me reasons to come back. On its best tracks, the issues that this album has simply melt away, and it becomes effortless to forget that SAKURA is even flawed to begin with. Like anything else, it’s got some cracks in it, but you can fill up those cracks with your mind. I have no idea when SAIKO plans on making another record, but until that happens, I’ll be looking forward to seeing him another day. Maybe he’ll keep going down this direction, or maybe he’ll go more rap, or maybe he’ll do something that no one possibly expects. But I’ll be here for it no matter what.

See you in the cosmos, SAIKO. Safe travels.

ALBUM RATING: 7/10

TRACK RANKING:

 

1: ÁNGEL DE LA GUARDA (PÓSTUMO)

2: BADGYAL (ft. JC Reyes, Dei V)

3: 3 CAÍDAS

4: NÚMERO TELEFÓNICO (ft. Mora)

5: LUNA (ft. DELLAFUENTE)

6: YO LO SOÑÉ (ft. Omar Montes)

7: ESKELETO (ft. Bryant Myers)

8: POLARIS – Remix (ft. Feid, Quevedo, Mora)

9: BOREAL

10: SUPERNOVA

11: HEY BB

12: LA RIJANA

13: COMETA HALLEY (ft. J Balvin)

14: FINALES DE AGOSTO

15: NANA DEL HIJO ROJO

16: COMO SUENAN LAS ESTRELLAS