Cocolo-RD is a Dominican urban artist, born on 7 May 1998, working in dembow and Dominican rap. He is an emerging performer rather than an established one: his documented recording history is short, with a single release catalogued in 2017, and most of his activity runs through his own social and video channels.

The name

He records under a name taken from cocolo, the Dominican term for the English-speaking Afro-Caribbean migrants who came to work the sugar estates of the eastern provinces from the late nineteenth century, and for their descendants.

Those descendants are not a historical footnote in La Romana and San Pedro de Macorís. The guloya masquerade traditions they brought are still danced there, and taking the word as a stage name is a claim on that inheritance rather than a decoration.

Villa Verde

He bills himself out of Villa Verde — from Villa Verde to the world, as his own channel puts it. Naming the barrio rather than the city is standard in Dominican dembow, and it is the genre’s way of saying that the address is part of the credential.