Raymond Ayala, the Puerto Rican rapper known as Daddy Yankee, delivered his first sermon on Sunday since his announcement in December that he would retire from the industry to preach the Christian gospel and serve Jesus.
Admitting to being “a little nervous” speaking about his personal relationship with God, Ayala detailed struggles with health, pride, depression, and other challenges, stating that he felt moved to give up his career because he felt he had grown to love it more than God and he could not properly follow his faith if he continued to perform.
Daddy Yankee is one of the most successful pop music artists in the world and arguably the single most successful artist of the Caribbean music genre reggaetón. He has sold over 30 million records around the world, his 2004 breakthrough hit “Gasolina,” now in the Library of Congress’s National Registry, went platinum as far as Japan. With dozens of Spanish-language hits throughout the Western Hemisphere, he also broke through American charts with the 2017 hit “Despacito” alongside fellow Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi.
While Ayala explained on Sunday he had never stopped believing in God – and on occasion dabbled in politics, such as his 2008 endorsement of late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) over former President Barack Obama – prior to his retirement he was not known as a conservative or religious figure. His music often included explicit and overtly sexual lyrics.
He announced his retirement in December, advising his fans, “to all the people who followed me, follow Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, must be above your love for God,” Ayala told the congregation at the Refugiados en su Presencia Evangelical church in Las Piedras, Puerto Rico, adding that the First Commandment, to love God above all else, was “non-negotiable.”
He admitted that he did not place his belief in Jesus above his career ambitions for years.
“I was so honest with God that I told God in my prayers: I love something more than you, I love my career more than you, and I knew the challenge in front of me,” he explained. “To follow God you have to sacrifice what you love the most to obtain the blessing.”
“I don’t know what you are going through in your life right now,” he told those in attendance, “what you have to sacrifice. Those who are here, who are of the kingdom, had to sacrifice something, that is why we are here.”
“If our lord made the ultimate sacrifice, sacrificed himself, paid the ultimate price, then what more can we do?” he asked. “So I had to sacrifice my career, the thing I loved most. Maybe you are sitting here without knowing the lord, as I was many times, and when they preached to me and that part came, I got silent and thought, ‘wow, that is to me.'”
“I am a new creature in the name of the lord,” Ayala declared, describing himself as “formerly known as Daddy Yankee.”
“Like many people here, I, too, am a miracle … God was never far, He was always near. I didn’t understand it, but yes, he was always close,” he stated. “I could be on tour today, making millions of dollars, but I am here completely free and I have a joy the world could not give me.”
Ayala explained that he was raised Catholic, making his first experiences in Evangelical worship events overwhelming. He credited his wife Mireddys González, whom he has been married to for nearly 30 years, for bringing him into her faith.
He went on to state that he strayed from worship at the age of 21 after a brief period of commitment and thanked God for allowing his career to blossom even when he was not close to Him.
“You can go far without God, I am proof of that. God made us in their image, he equipped us, he gave us talents and abilities that can take you very far without Him,” Ayala explained. “And if you don’t believe me I have a very clear example: the tower of Babel. I built my tower of Babel, I built a tower that reached the sky.”
He noted that his path back to faith began when he was diagnosed with several ailments, including hypertension and prediabetes.
“I’m in Colombia one day on the brink of death, in the hospital on the brink of death, one foot here and one foot on the other side,” he narrated. “I don’t know how many people here have been there … but I have several times… I can tell you what it is like to see the angel of death.”
“I ask God, ‘please give me the opportunity, if you revive me, and you give me the opportunity, I will serve you,'” he explained, but even then – in 2016, to his recollection – Ayala was not fully committed. His career continued to skyrocket but, he said, it was “success with the taste of failure” in the absence of God.
“The life of the chosen is a life of sacrifice,” he asserted. “You have to sacrifice what you love most that you know distances you from Him.”
Ayala’s conversion to Christianity echoes the post-career life of the Panamanian rapper Edgardo Franco, who under his artistic name El General is widely considered the founding father of reggaetón in Latin America. Combining Jamaican dancehall reggae with Latin American beats, El General was ubiquitous in Spanish-language culture in the early 1990s before abruptly disappearing.
Franco retired in 2004, disappearing from the public eye, and resurfaced in 2016 announcing he had become a Jehova’s Witness and condemning his own music for causing “a conflict with [his] conscience.”
The fame, he said at the time, was “a trophy from Satan for having abandoned Jehovah.”