Kikito Black is a Dominican dembow artist, born in Santo Domingo on 25 January 1988. He has been in the genre long enough to bill himself a veteran of it, and he now works between the island and Europe.

El que no repite letras

The tag he uses for himself — the one who does not repeat lyrics — is a jab at how the genre works. Dembow runs on recycled phrases, borrowed hooks and lines that travel from record to record, and claiming you write fresh every time is a position rather than a boast.

Brega and Ebola

Brega came out in June 2018. Ebola, cut with Skinny Xander, followed that September and went out through Bandcamp — an unusual route for a Dominican dembow record, which normally lives on YouTube and streaming and nowhere else.

Putting the music on Bandcamp puts it in front of a different audience: the international listeners who find Caribbean club music through that catalogue rather than through Dominican radio.

Between two places

He carries the Dominican, Spanish and European flags on his own profile and gives Santo Domingo as his base. That is the shape of a working dembow career now — the genre travelled with the migration, and the artists follow the audience across the Atlantic.