I started off this column by focusing consecutively on Tupac, then Kurt Cobain. These are two undisputed icons, deserving of their places in the annals of music history and the psyche of everyone who wants to find their way in popular culture. Despite their racial difference, they now sit together at the spiritual table of brotherhood – perpetually young and vital – as mutual voices of a generation. However, there in one more empty seat. Aware of my journalistic responsibility, I will show the world not just as black and white. Yes, I’ve established the monochrome of Kurt and Pac, Rock and Rap, do-rag and raggy-‘do, but what lies outside these binaries? Of course, the blurred centre can only be filled by the soulful croonings of Spanish pop-star Enrique Iglesias. And this week we deal with an incident that meant the logical final member of the mythic trio nearly took his seat next to Cobain and Tupac at their cultural icon death-banquet.
Playing a concert in Tijuana’s biggest bull-fighting arena, Enrique – undisputed “King of Latin Pop” – was performing for 12,000 of his groveling, sycophantic, soul-hungry subjects. A staple of the Iglesias’ ever-intimate stagecraft is for him to robustly handle the camera-drone so as to give the crowd his own point of view on screen. While some may say a performer with a budget high enough to use a camera drone could also employ a controller for the drone capable of hovering near a particular spot, these people probably also fail to understand why Enrique comes onstage wearing a tight Daz-whitened t-shirt and bulge-augmenting jeans as opposed to a dressing gown and some comfy crocs. Enrique knows that if he really wants to be my hero he’ll have to prance with his prominent masculinity on show and manhandle cutting-edge technology with his bare Latino hands.
A pesar del accidente q tuvo anoche @enrique en #Tijuana, dio cátedra de profesionalismo y termino con sangre y sudor pic.twitter.com/iOR8WThqto
— Joe Bonilla (@JOEBONILLA) May 31, 2015
However, tragedy struck as the reaching-Enrique recoiled from the small mechanical beast before tossing it to the ground like an enraged centaur. An appropriately timed expulsion of white confetti seemed to mask the scene but could not quell screams from the front row or the conspicuous splatter of blood on Iglesias’ otherwise virginally pure, white torso-covering. All credit Enrique; after a brief absence from stage he returned with a staunched hand wound just in time for some synchronized hip thrusts with a man in a hat, as is often the protocol in this kind of emergency.
This said, Enrique is a man accustomed to feeling excruciating pain during his sets, although this usually stems from the sincerity of his words and the tenderness that comes with laying your soul bare. He also used this injury to his advantage in a bizarre, vaguely psychotic fit of artistic creativity wherein he smudged his blood across his chest to form a crude heart. This is a bit weird. Iggy Pop he is not. However, we must remember it is exactly this type of another-plane, out-of-the-box imagination that brought us hits such as Heartbeat ft. Nicole Scherzinger. Either way, a calamity was narrowly avoided, and before I leave you to swoon over the video, I should point out that this is not the first time Enrique has injured his hand. In his career defining 2001 video for Hero, he is beaten up by Mickey Rourke leaving him with a noticeably lacerated hand at the end of the video. Is this just a coincidence or was Rourke in fact piloting the drone to finish the job? Almost definitely.
