Moreno Negrón is a Dominican merengue group founded in Santo Domingo on 30 September 2003. It is a group and not a singer, which the name does not make obvious.

Merengue de calle

They belong to the phase in which merengue came off the orchestral stage and into the barrio, driven by cheap production and a harder beat. The standard account of the genre names two acts as leading that movement: Omega and Moreno Negrón. Omega is the one who ended up carrying it furthest, but there were two of them at the front.

DJ Sticky, one of the pioneers of merengue de calle, came through the group and still produces the merengue-beat material that goes out under the name.

The records

Son Pájaro Malo is the one that broke them. Chicho Riso, Cúrate Conmigo, Ye’s Ye’s Ya’ll and Como Tu Baila Shake belong to the same run. Popurrí de Éxitos, produced by Sandy De La Cruz and Eddy Martínez with Martínez writing, gathers them.

The end and after

The group broke up, and the split is the thing they have been asked about ever since — long interviews built around how one of the best mambo groups ended, and around Omega. The name has kept releasing since, billed now as a living legend of mambo, but the original run is over.