The song was released as a single on January 24, 2019, by El Cartel Records alongside a music video directed by Marlon Peña and filmed in Los Angeles and Toronto, which features a Memoji (Animoji) of Daddy Yankee dancing with a crew.

Across Europe, the single peaked at number one in the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain, and reached the top five in Belgium, Poland, and Switzerland.

"Con Calma" was written by Daddy Yankee, Snow, and Juan "Gaby Music" Rivera, and was produced by American production duo Play-N-Skillz and co-produced by David "Scott Summers" Macias.

[1] The original version of "Con Calma" only featured vocals by Daddy Yankee, who told the producers that the song "needed [a] surprise factor" because they "had to pay tribute to the main author".

"[9] Daddy Yankee told Billboard that he chose to release "Dura" in 2018 instead of "Con Calma" and added that the former "opened up a new musical horizon and gave [him] the opportunity to stamp [his] signature.

[1][16] Less than 24 hours later, the duo flew from Miami to Los Angeles to work on the remix version with Katy Perry, who ended up recording all her vocals in one night.

[1] On April 17, 2019, less than three months after the release of the original version, Daddy Yankee posted an Instagram video of himself listening to Perry's lines and asking his fans when should it be published.

[2][7][8][9] Madeleine Marr of Miami Herald's Miami.com described the lyrics as about "a woman who works her feminine charms," while Camile Roldán Soto of El Nuevo Día stated that the track is about "a girl who dances very well.

[8] Daddy Yankee encouraged people on social media to take part of the Con Calma Challenge, which consists of uploading a video dancing to the song, in order to promote the single.

"[7] Suzy Exposito of Rolling Stone described the track as a "brilliant and maximalist pop song" and referred to Snow's verse as a "delightful nostalgia bomb".

"[24] Raisa Bruner of Time stated that "Daddy Yankee proves he's still very much on top of the game" despite having competition with "plenty of rising stars in Latin music".

Bruner also wrote that "even if you don't speak Spanish, [the chorus] is easy enough to pick up — and will inevitably get stuck in your head, not to mention get people onto a dance floor".

"[28] He compared the track's treatment to 2017's "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee when a remix featuring Canadian singer Justin Bieber "took [the song] to the next level.

"[28] He concluded the review by saying that "these few missteps with the lyrics and a lack of Perry interacting deeper with the Latin hit could stall this remix from gaining the true crossover success it clearly aims to capture.

"[23] She referred to the remix version as "weird" and stated that "Perry may be a pop chameleon, but her verses make for a cultural mismatch [...] and evoke the age-old Carmen Miranda tropicalism we should have left in the fifties.

"[24] Frida Garza of Jezebel website gave a negative review of the song, stating that "whoever approved this Katy Perry remix [...] might actually be trying to sabotage her career" and wondering if an AI wrote the first three lines of her opening verse.

[38][39][40] "Con Calma" peaked at number one on Hot Latin Songs on May 4, 2019, becoming Daddy Yankee's sixth number-one on the list, and remained there for 14 consecutive weeks until August 3, 2019.

[51][52][53] "Con Calma" was the best-selling and fourth most-streamed Spanish-language song of the first half of 2019 in the United States, with 120,000 downloads sold and 216,217,000 video and audio streams.

[55] Internationally, the original version topped the charts of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Slovenia, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and reached the top 10 in Austria, Belgium, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, France, Germany, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland.

[71] The following day, Daddy Yankee performed it at the 1st Tu Música Urbana Awards at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

[74] He also performed the original version on Spanish talk show El Hormiguero on May 30, 2019, and as a guest artist on Nickelodeon's sketch comedy series All That on June 22, 2019.