Reychesta, born José Alberto Collado and long billed as Secret Weapon, is a Dominican rapper and songwriter based in Queens. He is one of the most internationally connected figures Dominican hip-hop has produced and one of the least written about at home.

A performing-arts school and a plane

He was put into a performing-arts school at five and came out of it playing piano, guitar and saxophone — a formal musical education that almost nobody in Dominican rap has. At nine his mother took him to Corona, in Queens, and he grew up inside American hip-hop instead of beside it.

He was back in the Dominican Republic as a teenager, in a group called Public Mc, and by 1997 was freestyling on a Spanish-language morning radio show. The following year, in New York, he cut a vinyl EP in English with a group called Cliffhangaz for Fat Beats — an underground label with real standing, and an unusual first credit for a Dominican.

In 1999 the dancers from Ivy Queen’s shows gave him DJ Playero’s phone number. He called it, flew to Ponce, was met at the airport by Playero and Tempo, stayed two weeks and recorded with them. That is how careers were made in that decade: a number passed backstage, and a plane.

Tres Coronas

In 2001 he met P.N.O in New York, who brought in Rocca, and the three of them became one of the definitive Latin American rap groups of the decade. He named it: they were watching a horse race on television, the commentator said triple crown, and he suggested Tres Coronas.

The group is remembered as Colombian, because two of its three members were. The Dominican in it named it, wrote on it, and was there from the first session. The songs are on Parcero Production and then on Machete Music, and there are two documentaries about them.

It ended badly. He signed to Boy Wonder’s label some months before leaving, and after he left the other two kept the name — registered, on his account, without his consent. Everything since has been shadowed by it: he has released rehearsal tapes, remastered a track he had sung as a duet into a solo, and cut a long line of records aimed squarely at his former partners, who have answered.

A group name is a piece of property, and a rap group is usually three people with no contract between them. This is the most consequential thing in his biography and the thing least likely to appear in a discography.

The songs he wrote for other people

His best-known record as an artist is Falsedades, built by Artwell Smart on an SP1200 out of violins lifted from a 1960 ballad by the Puerto Rican singer Carmita Jiménez. He also cut Me Quieren Arrestar with producers who have three Grammys between them, and a record with Twista.

But the writing is where he has left the deepest mark. He wrote the chorus of Frikitona for Plan B, a record most of Latin America can sing. He made a remix with Alejandro Sanz. And in 2011 WWE commissioned him to write and perform the entrance theme for one of its wrestlers, alongside the man who had scored that company for thirty years.

Later he wrote much of a mixtape for another singer, including her records with Zion & Lennox, Maluma and Dave East. A Dominican from Queens writing a Puerto Rican woman’s verses for a Colombian star to sing on is the actual shape of Latin urban music, and it is invisible from any track listing.

Primera Corona

After falling out with his label in 2016 he changed his name to Primera Corona, to cut the link to the company, and released an EP produced by Artwell Smart with a guest verse from Big Pun’s son. He runs his own imprint, Primera Corona Records, and has kept putting out mixtapes.

Everything about him is a document of the same thing: Dominican rap did not stay in Santo Domingo. It went to Queens, to Ponce, to Bogotá and back, and the man who was in all those rooms has almost no coverage in the country he is from.