Proyecto Uno is a group of Dominican musicians founded in New York in 1989 by Nelson Zapata. They are the group that made merenhouse — merengue built on house and hip-hop production — into a genre, and El Tiburón is the record that carried it around the world.

What they did to the merengue

They were not the first to put a rap over a merengue: Wilfrido Vargas had been doing that with his orchestra through the eighties. What Proyecto Uno did was give the whole thing over to it. The horns went, the drum machine came in, the tempo locked to a dance floor rather than to a band, and the vocals became a chant traded between voices.

A Bogotá newspaper put it plainly years later: this is the record with which Proyecto Uno broke the laws of merengue. It was made by Dominicans who had grown up in New York, and it sounds like both places at once.

Everything that came after runs through them — Sandy y Papo, Fulanito, Ilegales, Zona 7. Merengue urbano and, later, dembow are downstream of what they built.

The records

Brinca came in 1990 and Todo el Mundo the year after. In Da House followed in 1994 and is the one that established them; New Era, 4, Pura Gozadera, Evolution, Original, Orgánico, Aniversario and Back in Da House take the story to the present.

El Tiburón, 25 Horas, Latinos, Está Pega’o, Another Night. They cut a dance record with Reel 2 Reel, which is how far outside the Latin market they were operating.

In Colombia, Está Pega’o was rewritten for the national football team on its way to the 1994 World Cup — the point at which a Dominican song stops being Dominican property and becomes somebody else’s anthem.

Thirty-five years

The line-up has turned over many times. Ricky Echeverría was there at the start; Magic Juan, Erick Morales, Johnny Salgado, Josué Cedeño, Anthony Galindo and José Medina passed through. Zapata is still there, now with Kid G and Paolo Tondo.

They have played Spain, Puerto Rico, Chile, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and further out than that — Japan, Australia, Thailand, Jerusalem. Billboard, Premios Lo Nuestro and an Emmy for original music composition are among the recognitions, and VH1 Latino placed El Tiburón in its hundred songs of the nineties.