Ariel Kelly, born March 26, 1977 in Santo Domingo, is a Dominican Christian rapper, songwriter and producer. He has been recording since 1999 and is one of the founding figures of Dominican Christian rap — seven albums across twenty-five years, most of them on his own label.

A pastor’s house and an older brother

His parents, Rafael Kelly and Grecia Camilo, are evangelical pastors. The music came from a different direction inside the same house: his older brother Erlin Otoniel Kelly turned him toward rap and reggaetón. He was writing songs and singing by seven, and winning his school’s talent shows.

The albums

• Juan 3:16 (2000), ten rap tracks,

• Asaltante (2004),

• Violencia Espiritual (2007),

• AK-47 (2011),

• Quinto Elemento (2014),

• A Sangre y Fuego (2018),

• and Leví (2024).

He recorded for Bohuco Music from 2000 to 2003 and has released through his own imprint, AK Records, ever since. El Asaltante, Así Es La Vida, Hip Hop and La Verdad Del Padre De La Mentira are among the singles; El Exorcista, from 2020, was written as an answer to Residente over the content of his lyrics.

Violencia Espiritual and a Van Damme film

The title song of the 2007 album, cut with the rappers Henry G and Romy Ram and produced by Antonio González and Helton de Jesús, became the main soundtrack of We Die Young, the 2019 action film directed by Lior Geller and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Two more songs from the same album, Xtra and Vamo, were used in it as well.

Kelly has said he wrote it in 2007 to set down what happens in Dominican neighbourhoods — the drugs, the crime, the violence — and what God can do in the middle of it. A film about a fourteen-year-old trying to get out of a gang-run neighbourhood took the song for exactly that reason.

Recognition and company

AK-47 took best urban production at Premios El Galardón in 2013, and the same awards gave him a career recognition in 2019. In 2020 he was nominated at Premios Redención and again at El Galardón, as an outstanding Dominican abroad. He has recorded with Tercer Cielo, Lilly Goodman, Aposento Alto, Redimi2, Manny Montes, Damaris Guerra and Sensato del Patio, and in 2023 he opened Chosen Few Fe — the producer Boy Wonder CF’s first Christian project — with the single Autoayuda.

Legacy

Dominican Christian rap has one reach that no other part of the genre has matched: a song from it became the main soundtrack of a Hollywood action picture, and it was Kelly’s. That aside, his importance is structural. He started in 1999, ran his own label from 2003, and has kept releasing across a quarter century in which the scene formed, split and re-formed around him. Nearly everyone making Christian rap in the country today arrived after he did.