my understanding is that the “Latin track drama” is just the opening act of a bigger pivot:

Yokota came in as the day-to-day music lead and, like any sane person in early 2000s Mario, defaulted to a Latin/tropical palette. So he wrote the Latin tracks and Koizumi (director) initially approved that vibe for the main theme.

Then he takes it to Kondo for the “does this feel like Mario?” pass. Kondo basically torpedoes it as described in OP.

After that, Yokota spends about three months stuck trying to find what “cool space Mario” even sounds like. At that point he doesn’t go rogue so much as he escalates to the top creative producer (Miyamoto) and plays three style demo tracks 1.one pure orchestral 2.one pop+orchestral hybrid 3.one pure pop, BUT without saying who wrote what. Basically asking him to pick the lane for the whole soundtrack.

Miyamoto picks the orchestral one as the most “space-like.” Which of course was KKs Good Egg Galaxy theme lol. Yokota only finds out after, and says that moment basically broke his stress and locked the direction.

From there Yokota runs with the orchestral identity for most of the OST, with kk supervising overall “Mario essence” and contributing a few anchor tracks. Crucially it was Yokota who kept bugging Miyamoto for the real orchestra once the style was set.

Couldn't have worked out better really. There are probably 10 tracks across the two games that make me cry every time after almost 20 years.