Reggaetón and salsa are two musical genres connected not merely by shared geography but by their racial politics, transnational trajectories, and regional stances. Salsa artists like Rubén Blades have claimed that, although reggaetón musicians are perceived as requiring a different technical training in their craft, they have adopted lyrical styles and other aesthetic aspects of salsa vieja. This link has been explicit in the rhetoric of reggaetón practitioners: Old-school Puerto Rican reggaetón musicians like Eddie Dee and Daddy Yankee have been vocal about drawing inspiration from the maestros salseros while honoring this legacy through albums and performances. Yet, how does this connection extend beyond sampling practices and discursive references? This paper examines the transformation of Puerto Rican reggaetón’s compositional practices through its rhythmic and historical relationship with salsa, focusing on how the clave rhythm of salsa has shaped and counter-shaped the dancehall riddim and singing/rapping flows of reggaetón. Through a close reading of the 2004 album 12 Discipulos, in which 12 famous reggaetón artists pay homage to salsa, we explore the extent to which the instrumental layers and songs align or misalign with clave. Drawing on Édouard Glissant’s poetics of relation (1990), we contend that the rhythmic encounter between clave and dancehall riddim articulates a musical genealogy of diasporic belonging in an ongoing negotiation rooted in Black Atlantic diasporic traditions shared by these two pan-Latino genres. By examining how reggaetón discourse materializes in rhythmic design, this discussion contributes to balancing the role of musical sounds and discourse in ethnomusicology.