Whitest Taino Alive

In the last decade, hip-hop’s regional and national distinctions have crumbled. From A$AP Rocky's love affair with Southern rap to the worldwide commercial rise of trap music, examples of the internet’s role in generating styles of hip-hop that upend expectations abound. In international hip-hop communities in particular, accelerated online communication has broken down barriers that often delayed the arrival of new sounds.

Enter Whitest Taino Alive. With even a name that riffs on influences as disparate as Norwegian indie rock band The Whitest Boy Alive and the Arawak indigenous group native to the Dominican Republic, the Dominican hip-hop trio perfectly reflects these collapsed boundaries. Comprised of producer DaBeat Ortiz and rappers Jon Blon Jovi and Dominicanye West (a rap name to end all rap names), they’re one of the few voices in independent hip-hop on the island.

While Dominicans worked with Puerto Rican rappers and produced their own music in the DR in the 90s, Dominican artists generally lacked the visibility and infrastructure that Puerto Rico’s scene enjoyed through its connections and resources as a U.S. territory. Today, hip-hop remains a niche genre. Dance-friendly music like merengue and bachata, along with the newer, more electronic genres of reggaeton and dembow, dominate the Dominican market. However, services like Soundcloud offer Whitest Taino Alive the opportunity to cultivate their sound in underground spaces.

DaBeat Ortiz creates tropical, breezy trap beats that evoke avant-garde collective Future Brown while drawing upon cloud rap and the minimalism of Flying Lotus. Top this off with screwed down vocals and a drop that roughly translates to “refined ratchetness” (chopería fina), and you’ve got the recipe for The Most 2015 Sound Ever. It’s also the perfect soundtrack for the group’s funny, free associative lyrics, which are full of sly references in Spanish and English to Dominican and American pop culture. On last year's album ¿Dónde Jugarán Los Cueros?, they cite Sammy Sosa, Yoko Ono, Heisenberg, Chuck Norris, A-Rod—the list goes on and on. They rap “about anything:” driving down Santo Domingo’s boulevards, smoking weed, chilling with leathers (hoes), and drinking mamajuana. They’re fond of “rap game” jokes but with a Dominican flow: “Rap game Junot / I’m not a rapper or a producer / I’m a loser / This is how I lose her.” This is music for nerdy kids who grew up with merengue and a high-speed internet connection (*looks left* *looks right* *whispers* it me).

- Isabelia Herrera is the whitest Taina alive. Follow her on Twitter. - Noisey

03. ¿Dónde Jugarán Los Cueros?
WHITEST TAINO ALIVE, STEREOPTICO. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican newcomers Whitest Taino Alive join Füete Billēte and Buscabulla as one of the most memorable emerging acts of the last few years. Led by the equally prolific and abrasive producer Cohoba, and branding on the idea of providing the audience with something they call Choperia Fina (rocking beats while wearing leather), WTA afford to sound truly colossal on their debut album. Featuring a grand-sound design and an ambitious composition, ¿Dónde Jugarán Los Cueros? is an album that sounds nothing short from pristine (and puts the latest Calle 13 to an even bigger shame). We wouldn’t expect anything less from Cohoba, whose stellar EP Chroamatism earlier this year has profiled him as the Dominican Republic’s most distinguished music maker since Rita Indiana. For a producer with a fondness for rapture and visceral banging, he is faced with the task of negotiating his beats for the vocal dissertation of WTA (conformed by Cohoba, Blon Jovi & Dominicanye West). The results are valiantly tackled and arresting for the most part. Lyrically, the album delivers plenty of hilarious one-liners, but frequently struggles to accomplish roundness in the storytelling. The narrative is still wonderfully uncompromised in both, their outburst and restrained lines of attack. And that’s perhaps WTA’s biggest attraction, its ability to position itself as understated text and then become a major threat to the dancefloor by the very next track. - Carlos Reyes - Club Fonograma

002. Whitest Taino Alive - “Mi Bandera”
“Mi Bandera” is a song that reminds us of the universal scope of rap music. Sure, rap’s aesthetics are usually imposed by the US mega industry trends, but its flexibility is such that a trio from the Dominican Republic can seamlessly use beats and rhymes as to both conflate and separate the gap between past and present (digital production with sounds reminiscent of another era), or local and regional (spitting Dominican slang terms while thematically touching on American pop culture references). But more importantly, like all great hip-hop, it’s also party music that’s wholly inviting to a collective escaping of real-life’s harsh realities. - Pierre Lestruhaut - Club Fonograma

WTA is what happens when you throw DR’s fresh to death set in a studio to play with chill trap paraphernalia and spit rapid-fire “español aplatanado” tinged with the island’s oh so clever sense of humor. It’s not that “Mi Bandera” is better than any of the other outstanding tunes featured on ¿Dónde Jugarán Los Cueros?, it’s just that we had to pick one, and “Mi Bandera” is that one song off the LP that makes you stop everything you’re doing and TURN IT UP. This tune will have you singing “no me mates la vibra” in total Dominican flow, all hyped up with your hands in the air for sure. –Eric Gamboa - Remezcla

Sure, we’re your source for film, music, and all things Latino– but we want to be your go-to linguistics guide, too. You don’t have to be an Einstein to know that once you get throw two Dominicans in a room, folks from Spanish-speaking nations have a really hard time understanding our rapid-fire “español aplatanado.”

For the sake of cultural exchange and ESPAÑOL enlightenment, we put our friends from Whitest Taino Alive to the task of coming up with a list of ten Dominican terms you should know. This list will come handy tomorrow morning with the release of Whitest Taino Alive’s first album Donde Jugaran Los Cueros, exclusively on Remezcla.

I highly recommend you prepare yourself for leaning with a glass of the only beer that no president have ever drank (get the joke?). - Remezcla

Hace tiempo que en República Dominicana no se habla español, se habla otra cosa. Eso opina Haru aka Jon Blon Jovi (JBJ), uno de los dos MCs de Whitest Taino Alive. Escuchando el segundo disco del trío completado por César Pineda aka Dominikanye West (DCW, voz) y Cohoba aka DaBeat Ortiz (DBO, producción musical), titulado Dónde Jugarán los Cueros (Stereoptico, 2014), queda claro a qué se refiere. Parafraseo lleno de slang y ávidos juegos de palabras. Todo ello revestido de sonidos electrónicos contemporáneos con bastante ritmo. Ritmo rana, ritmo trap, del futuro. Y vibra criolla, por montones, bañada en beats gordos.

Este proyecto originario de Santo Domingo, formado apenas el año pasado por la experiencia de Cohoba (uno de los mejores exponentes del multiculturalismo electrónico, quien representó a la Isla en la Red Bull Music Academy de Londres en el 2010) y por la agilidad verbal de Haru y Pineda, es ni más ni menos que la nueva propuesta del rap latintrónico que, creemos, llegará muy lejos en los próximos meses. Y en México tendremos la chance de verlos en vivo por primera vez en el Festival Nrmal 2015, el próximo 28 de febrero y 1 de marzo en el DF.

Tuvimos una charla virtual con los tres integrantes en la que hablamos de su EP debut Chopería Fina (término sumamente dominicano que representa a la perfección su sonido), y de la inspiración que hubo en su nueva grabación (la cual te puedes descargar free aquí), así como de la jerga local que usan día a día, beat a beat, en sus canciones. Esto es la chopería fina. Aplaudan con la cuca. - One Heap Wonder