Rita put me on...

Had one of those "holy shit this cab driver has the nastiest tunes on the block" moments awhile back. In this case it was a Dominican cat who was rocking a mix CD that "sounded like merengue". For all intensive purposes it was merengue, but SUPER stripped down and 100% digital. Kinda rap, kinda electro ish, chopped up horns, aaabbbstract lirics. Tunes were RAW. The driver cat had just gotten the mix from his guy in Santo Domingo and wasn't really trying to come off of it. I tried, for real.

SWITCH. While in Puerto Rico last month for some MIMA shows I got to meet up with the Dominican writer Rita Indiana for "drinks". During the initial "I don't know you very well so let's talk about music" part of the evening I told her about the mixtape I had heard and she sorted me out with these three tracks...

For the record, it is a style of Merengue that's coming out of Santo Domingo called "Mambo". Alot of it is made on, surprise surprise , laptops. This is kinda the lick in the DR right now, but as these things go, you really don't hear alot of it in the states. Three tunes. Enjoy.

1. Jucafry & El Sujeto - Rototen. The piano. THE HORNS. The rapping. Come on..... Dance floor look is on some snake shit too.

2. Tulile - La Culebra. Cule Culeeebra, Cule Culeeebra!!!!! Tulile appears to be an actual lunatic. He's in a toga in the "Witi Ti Wata Tao" video. Not even going into the fact that he has a song called "Witi Ti Wata Tao".... Yeah there's that. La Culebra is the hit. Obviously the chick wants the cubebra. There's even an actual attempt to imitate a rattle snake sound at the beginning of the track. It's bizarre and addictive.

3. Moreno Negron - No Mas Pumas . Apparently Pumas are like big in the Dominican cornball set (some crossovers stateside as well...) Somebody finally made a song about it. No more pumas y'all.

-Nature