Fulanito is a Dominican-American merengue group formed in Washington Heights, New York, in 1996 by the producers Rafael "Dose" Vargas and Winston de la Rosa, who fused perico ripiao accordion with house and hip hop to create merenhouse, one of the best-selling Latin dance sounds of the late 1990s.

Before Fulanito

Vargas had already had a run of dance-floor hits before Fulanito: «Wiggle It», recorded in 1990 with the group 2 in a Room, reached number one on Billboard's dance chart, and «El Trago», from the 1994 album «World Party», paired him with his high-school friend Elvin Ovalles. In 1995 he partnered with the Bronx-raised producer and engineer Winston de la Rosa, whom he had met in a studio session three years earlier, to form 740 Boyz, whose «Shimmy Shake» became a gold-selling club hit across Europe and North Africa.

«El Hombre Más Famoso de la Tierra» and merenhouse

Looking to draw on their own Dominican roots, Vargas and de la Rosa recruited the veteran accordionist Arsenio de la Rosa, Winston's father and a respected perico ripiao musician known as El Maestro, and released «El Hombre Más Famoso de la Tierra» in 1997 on Cutting Records. Built on Vargas's rapped, high-pitched choruses over de la Rosa's accordion, the album sold more than half a million copies and its single «Guallando» was named song of the year in Colombia; «El Cepillo» and «La Novela» followed it onto Latin dance charts worldwide, and the style the group had defined came to be known as merenhouse.

Grammy nominations and «El Generalísimo»

«El Padrino» (1999) earned Fulanito its first Grammy nomination and placed songs including «Serenata Negra» in John Singleton's «Shaft»; that year the group also won a Premio Casandra and the Gaviota award at Chile's Festival de Viña del Mar. «Americanizao» (2001) turned the group into a quartet and produced «Cállate», but its track «El Generalísimo» was pulled from Dominican radio within days of release over accusations that the title glorified the dictator Rafael Trujillo. «La Verdad» (2004) brought in new members again, and «Vacanería!» (2007), made with the production team Guary y Cleyton and guests including Magic Juan, of Proyecto Uno, and José Peña Suazo y La Banda Gorda, earned Vargas a second Grammy nomination.

Legacy

Fulanito's lineup narrowed over the years to Vargas as its constant, but the group has kept touring internationally into the 2020s. By putting perico ripiao accordion inside a hip hop and house record and selling it worldwide, Fulanito opened a path that later Dominican urban and merengue-crossover acts would follow, proof that the genre's rural sound could headline the same stages as anything else in the Latin dance market.