Which raises the question: There are people making reggaeton music in Philadelphia?

Yes. And in Canada, as Hancel will tell you. He's used to getting looks of surprise when he tells people where he's from, but he calls Philadelphia the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the provincial explosion of this hip-hop/Latin hybrid. "I know people in Montreal doing great reggaeton," he says.

It's a bizarre commentary on the cultural insularity of the Philadelphia radio and record industry: Record labels have discovered Hancel even before he could become an underground sensation in his hometown. He doesn't perform here often, and radio play is hard to come by. There are four hip-hop stations in town, but the primary outlet for Hancel's music is the AM band; Caliente 1310, where he's a DJ.

SAME OLD SONG: "I thought everything was easy, that everybody could be Daddy Yankee," says Hancel. "But it's not like that. You've got to be connected." : Michael T. Regan

"Here you can't get reggaeton on any of the mainstream hip-hop stations," says Joey Massarueh, aka DJ Deluxxx, head of G13, a DJ collective that has been spinning local reggaeton events for a couple years, watching its popularity grow dramatically. "Philadelphia is behind every major market that way."

Massarueh says Philadelphia's status as the fourth largest media market in the nation and its significant Hispanic population (132,000, the third largest Hispanic market on the East Coast, but only the 18th overall) should give reggaeton a higher profile, "but there are some [radio] program managers that have their heads way up their ass."

Hancel puts it just as bluntly: "They don't think Philly has what it takes to do reggaeton."

Born Sadiel Castro in Puerto Rico, Hancel grew up working timbales and congas in the church where his father was a pastor, playing a gospel/salsa amalgam that sounds cool enough to inspire a Ry Cooder album. When his father decided to move to Philadelphia, Hancel was 19 and determined to stay, but a car accident a few months before the move left him unable to bring a spoon to his mouth, much less a microphone.

For three months after the move he was a hermit, finally leaving the house to get a haircut. The barber he happened across introduced him to other reggaeton savvy kids like himself. Hancel was shocked they existed. "When I first came here, I thought there was no reggaeton," he says.

A year after arriving in Philadelphia, Hancel got serious about making music and moved back to Puerto Rico, but the naive youngster got lost in the shuffle of San Juan's burgeoning reggaeton scene during the northward migration that would make it an MTV2 rallying cry and a household name.

"I thought everything was easy, that everybody could be Daddy Yankee," he says. "When I saw a corny rapper on TV I said, 'I can do this! I'm so much better!' But it's not like that. You've got to be connected."

Having accomplished little, he came back to Philadelphia in 2003, but this time the remoteness of the local reggaeton "scene" was an advantage. In Puerto Rico, he was just another kid with a demo. In Philly, he was unique: an artist with straight-off-the-island credibility and fresh Puerto Rican flow. Placed somewhere between "novelty" and "trend," he found the connections he needed to move his career. Mix tapes that had seeped out of Hancel's home studio made their way to a few New York-based producerswho sought him out to help promote his music.

Away from the reggaeton nexus of San Juan, Hancel had to start crafting his own beats to rap over. True to his roots as a percussionist, there's always a set of timbales rattling around Hancel's tracks, lending an organic, wood-grain authenticity to the compressed and harsh synthesizers that shape the music. He favors lilting flute sounds that whirl and hover over bounce-and-hop backbeats. His vocal delivery is half-sung, red-faced and urgent. It's got a harsh immediacy that belies the 24-year-old's smooth baby face and the wisps of whiskers on his chin.

Despite his success since moving back to Philadelphia, Hancel has experienced a litany of music business failures that would read like an episode of Behind the Music. That is, if they weren't so demoralizing to the young non-native English speaker. It's a struggle navigating the cultural and lingual divides between North Philly, where the music finds its cultural inspiration, and "The Crossover Hit," where the recognition, money and fame lie. After Hancel paid in advance, a Web site designer put up a skeleton of a site and then disappeared. His manager, and friend, was murdered in New York during a home robbery. Hancel's next manager signed the rights to his music over to his own name, effectively stealing the songs from him.

"I'm supposed to have a big friggin' house and a big car and a lot of money," says Hancel, who's been living with his dad in Northeast Philly, "but these guys set me up."

The biggest issue on Hancel's mind now is what to do with the record label interest he's attracted. When he talks about it, he winces. "The best problem I have right now is that a bunch of companies want to sign me and I don't know what to do. I don't have someone to trust," he says.

Indie labels like Afuego and U.B.O. have made offers, as has the Latin arm of Warner Bros. Records. Some labels want him as a producer, some want him to rap and produce, but none of them has expressed interest in bringing along Hancel's six-man crew The New Family, and that's where the talks stall.

In the meantime, Hancel is in the middle of dropping 40 pounds from his chubby frame because he knows it'll make him more marketable. And he's keeping his job as a morning DJ at Caliente, dragging himself into its Delaware Avenue office by 5:30 a.m. He stays there until 1 p.m. and then leaves to work at his studio. If he's lucky, he's in bed by 9. It's a tough schedule for a rising urban music star, but when the sun finally rises on his recording career, he can skip the dawn over Fishtown.

(z_mortice@citypaper.net)