It was with great fanfare that Atlantic Records announced the signing of Tego Calderón in June 2005. He was the first major-label signing of a reggaeton artist, the Caribbean style (a combination of hip hop, dancehall, salsa, bomba, and merengue) that had already become a mixtape and urban-radio hit, and now looked poised to take the rest of America by storm.

Around that time, I profiled Mr. Calderón for a magazine. We spent the afternoon driving from a photo shoot to an interview with Hot 97 DJ Angie Martinez, where he talked about his forthcoming album, “Subestimato/The Underdog.” Our transportation was a deluxe SUV — compliments of Atlantic — wallpapered in a huge image of Mr. Calderón’s afroed profile on the side. With the window rolled down, he chain smoked Marlboros and signed autographs at stop lights all the way downtown.It appeared the underdog had the world by the tail.

Now, a full year after the original release date, his album is finally seeing the light of day. I won’t pretend to know the minds of record executives or the specific causes for the delay, but I have a theory: The record isn’t at all what Atlantic signed on for.

What made Mr. Calderón so attractive, what set him apart from the rest of the emerging reggaeton stars, was his ability to move seamlessly between the worlds of Spanish and English, reggaeton and hip hop.Whereas stars like Daddy Yankee and Don Omar sound soft with their sing-songy styles, Mr. Calderón is pure street. Like Tupac, Biggie, and Jay-Z, he is gifted with an instantly recognizable voice — in his case a sultry, syrupy baritone — that flows easily over any beat. His reputation in America owes as much to mixtape appearances — on 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.,” Fat Joe’s “Lean Back,” the Game’s “Love Them Hoes,” and Cypress Hill’s “Latin Thugs” — as to his own songs. No matter whom you match him up with, Mr. Calderón seems to get the better of his American counterparts.

That’s what makes “The Underdog” so baffling, as much to listeners as to the record label. Instead of stuffing it with top-shelf beats and name-brand rappers, Mr. Calderón has instead taken the opportunity to explore his afro-carribbean roots and to showcase salsa, dancehall, and reggaeton talents even less well known than himself (among them Voltio and Chyno Nyno).

At 25 tracks, there’s a little bit of everything here. “Los Maté,” the first single, showcases the pixilated boom-tick-ticka-tick-boom beats that have come to define reggaeton during the reign of super producers Luny Tunes. The Latin rhythms and Santana-sounding bent guitar notes of “Mardi Gras” recall the stoned funk of Cypress Hill. “Bad Man” is a straightforward reggae track with choruses by dancehall MC Buju Banton.

Mr. Calderón’s first love — before rap — was Latin jazz. He was trained as a percussionist, and you can hear his affinity for the music on songs like “Llevatelo Todo” and “Slo’ Mo.” “Chango Blanco” does away with rapping altogether, as he sings a classic samba over a hip-shaking beat of congo, piano, trumpets, and an all-male nightclub chorus.

Only a few songs hint at the crossover album that might have been.The bounding beat of “Veo Veo” is almost a rip-off of Fat Joe’s “Lean Back,” and features some of Mr. Calderón’s best rapping, which spills over multiple measures.The classic flute-driven beat and heartfelt flow of “A Mi Papa” recalls Tupac’s “Dear Mama” in theme and tone.

“It’s a no-no coming with the slo mo/You might not understand, but it’s hot though,” he raps with a slight lisp in one of his few English verses. He’s right — but only to a point. Mr. Calderón’s voice, flow, and musical choices are interesting enough that you want to listen, even if, like me, your junior high Spanish only lets you to understand every fourth word. But they can hold your attention only for so long.

***

Playing the middle slot on a bill that included Neko Case and Martha Wainwright, Joanna Newsom showcased material from her forthcoming second album (due out on Drag City in November) at McCarren Park Pool Thursday night. Wearing a simple strapless green dress cinched with a bolt of cloth and low heels, the diminutive harp-playing princess of freak folk looked surprisingly subdued.(The last time I saw her, back in 2004, she was flamboyant in a flapper headdress, Native American armband, peasant dress, and boots.)

Her sound was similarly restrained. Gone is the wild, muted-horn voice that so shocked and thrilled listeners on her debut album, “The Milk-Eyed Mender.” In its place were controlled little voice trills that failed to achieve the same fairy-magic effect.

Ms. Newsome’s epic new material — most songs stretch to nine or 10 minutes (or maybe it just seemed that way) — groaned under the weight of its lofty ambitions. Instead of the sprightly melodies and cute, memorable lyrics that characterized her early work, the new songs were formless and overlong. Melodies were buried beneath sections of roiling plucking and abstract Oriental runs of notes.

One did occasionally hear patches of beautiful and strange imagery in the lyrics — “there is a rusty light in the pines tonight/bones of birches and spires of churches/the meteorite is the source of the light/the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that willed it to be” — but they didn’t add up to anything like a coherent storyline. And none had the perky playfulness of lines like “I killed my dinner with karate/kick ’em in the face taste the body,” from “The Book of Right On,” which was among the familiar favorites she played. Unfortunately, the old songs only reinforced the inadequacy of the new ones.