Arianna Puello — Arianna Isabel Puello Pereyra, born in San Pedro de Macorís on 16 January 1977 — is a rapper, songwriter and actress. She left the Dominican Republic at eight and built her career in Spain, where she was one of the first women to hold a place in the recording end of Spanish hip hop.

Salt

The family settled in Barcelona. She heard rap through her brother, who did beatbox, and a cousin in New York who posted vinyl across. In the summer of 1993 she moved to Sant Narcís, in Girona, and started going to La Maret in Salt — an old sausage factory that squatters had taken over that December.

She has said it plainly: she saw the rap groups, the graffiti crews, the b-boys, and decided that was hers. She was sixteen when she started rapping, and La Maret is where she first took a microphone. Her first recording was a song made with a friend, Virginia Hernández.

The groups and the first records

In 1994 she passed through N.O. Del KRIB — Nacidos Originalmente Del Karibe — and Discípulos Del Micro. When they broke up in 1996 she went out alone, and a year later Mujer Chunga, made with El Meswy of El Club de los Poetas Violentos, put her name in front of people. In 1998, billed simply as Ari, she cut El Tentempié.

Gancho Perfecto and La Fecha

Gancho Perfecto arrived in 1999, seventeen tracks with Sr. Tcee, El Meswy, Fout, Esmit, Nomah and Frank T on it, and it put her at the head of the women in Spanish hip hop. La Fecha followed in 2001 and went further than anything else she made: eighteen tracks, with Hurricane G, Mucho Muchacho, Ache ST and La Gentuza de Gerona among the guests.

Así Lo Siento in 2003 is the Latin record, nineteen tracks with Orishas, Roldán, Hablando en Plata and Rossy de Palma on it. Juana Kalamidad came as a two-cut maxi in 2007.

13 Razones and after

13 Razones, in 2008, is the argument record: fifteen tracks and two bonus cuts, no guests at all, folding dancehall and Caribbean rhythms into hip hop. It was nominated for best hip hop album at the thirteenth Premios de la Música. Kombate o Muere followed in 2010 and Despierta in 2015. She has recorded for Zona Bruta and Mastered Trax Latino.

On screen

She acts. She played Jamila in the feature Mi Dulce, opposite Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, and appeared in Shacky Carmine and in the short Casa de Muñecas, directed by Guillermo Barreira. She has also turned up as herself on Spanish television, on La Mandrágora and on Loops!

A tour of Latin America in 2010 changed how she talks about the work. In Bolivia she saw hip hop used as a support by people with the least, and she has framed what she does around that since.