Don Omar’s Sueños Music Festival headliner set on Sunday night opened up with one of the singer-songwriter and record producer’s most popular songs: “Dale Don.”
Dressed in an elaborately tailored blazer and grey turtleneck, Omar knew exactly what he needed to do to get the crowd pumped up for the closing set of the Latin music festival. The singer even came on a few minutes early and gave a shout-out to all his “Mexican brothers and sisters” in the audience, which fans responded to with deafening screams.
For the majority of his set, fans were very pleased with the performance. Couples started perreando early and sang along as each song played out. The performance was jam-packed with tons of his classics, including “Hasta Abajo,” “Dile” and “Mayor Que Yo.”
“Are we having fun?,” Omar asked the crowd with a huge smile on his face. He reserved his voice for singing and let the melodies do most of the talking. “¡Seguimos! Let’s keep going!”
Fans also were treated to a remixed version of his 2003 hit “Dile,” a song in which he tries his best to convince his paramour to leave her man for him.
“Pobre Diabla” quickly followed, which saw fans belting out the lyrics. At this point, Omar was only about 15 minutes into the set. The singer was visibly overjoyed with the response that the crowd was giving him.
The hits kept coming, including “Ella Y Yo,” a song he worked on with Romeo Santos. He held out his mic so that the crowd could engage in the duet, but besides the loyal fans that likely waited all day at the barricade to catch the self-proclaimed “King of Kings,” the ones deep in the herd didn’t seem to be as familiar with this one.
The crowd was a good mix of multigenerational families, groups of friends, couples and more, from young to old. Omar is absolutely a generational artist, his impact is so large that even younger folks are familiar with his tunes.
His music (namely, the song “Danza Kuduro”) has also been featured in the “Fast & Furious” movie franchise soundtracks, effectively making him a household name for even those who don’t regularly listen to reggaeton.
He took a moment also to admire the diversity of crowd. “The future of this city is you, young people,” he commented.
The singer slowed things down a little bit with “Taboo,” on which the famous 1989 Brazilian song “Lambada” is sampled. He’s influenced by plenty of genres that don’t hail from Puerto Rico in his music, especially with so many merengue and dembow beats.
Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, as William Omar Landrón Rivera, the artist rose to fame in the early 2000s reggaeton scene alongside fellow Boricua reggaetoneros Daddy Yankee (who, up until 2023, he once shared a decades-long feud with) and R.K.M. & Ken-Y.
In the world of urban Latino music, Don Omar is known as the “King of Reggaeton” or “El Rey” in Spanish. He fully embraces that title and all of its responsibility, too. His second studio album in 2006, “King of Kings,” and his 2023 album “FOREVER KING,” are where some of the singer’s most iconic songs live.
“Danza Kuduro” and “Bandoleros” were the last two songs of the night before Omar thanked the audience for welcoming him to Chicago. Last June, Omar was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He announced to the crowd that he had a successful surgery and was cancer-free shortly thereafter.
At his Sueños set, Omar looked happy, healthy and genuinely excited to be on stage. He wished a hug and kiss for everyone in the crowd with the song “Agradecido” — which is about waking up grateful — as the outro.