X3MO, born Ruddy Diloné Cordero on 6 December 1983 at the maternity hospital in Los Mina, Santo Domingo, is a Dominican rapper who also works in reggae. He bills himself as El Xtremo, and the nickname that stuck came from where he is from: el carolinero con tola.

Early years and formation

He is a product of Los Mina and Villa Carolina, on the east side of the capital, and he has never dropped the address from the name. Gracias a Dios was the first record to move, and the barrio tag came with it.

He built the operation himself. E.D.S Records and X3MO Music Ent. are his own imprints; Pochi Ranks, Raven M3, Jimgraph and DJ Sammy The Greatest have handled the production.

The records

Me Calientas, cut with Lápiz Conciente and El Pote, is the collaboration that put him among the first rank of Dominican rappers, and Calentón Calentón brought Vakeró in alongside them. He appears on Villanosam’s remix with Mozart La Para and Toxic Crow — that record is close to a roll call of Dominican hip-hop at the turn of the 2010s, and he is on it.

ChakaLaka, Juanita, Mi Blondie, Una Ocasión, Celosa y Bipolar, Otro Como Yo, Shingoteo, Mi Mamá and 120 Segundos run across the catalogue. Único En Su Clase gathered a long guest list onto one track.

The historian

The second half of his work is talking rather than rapping. He runs a programme and a podcast, and he has made long video essays on the history of the genre he came up in — Evolución del Rap Dominicano and Qué Pasa Con El Rap Dominicano among them.

Dominican rap has few people willing to do that work from inside it. Being one of the artists in the story and also one of the people telling it is an unusual position, and he has used it to argue about where the music went rather than only about where it came from.