Yankee 017, born Dalvin Encarnación, is a Dominican trap and rap artist from San Juan de la Maguana. He works from the south-west rather than from the capital, which in Dominican urban music is a harder place to be heard from and a rarer place to be heard from.

The south-west

Almost everything in Dominican urban music runs through Santo Domingo. He has built an audience without moving there, playing San Juan and the towns around it and releasing through OGF Music Group, which operates out of the same province.

People there call him the Lápiz Conciente of San Juan de la Maguana. He has rejected the comparison in public rather than accepting it, which is the correct answer and also tells you what kind of rapper the audience hears.

The records

TATE is the furthest-reaching of them, and Envidia, made with OG Nvndo, is close behind. Pikete, Lo Buenísimo, En El 15 with Ysi P30, Vienen Por Mí, Leyenda and Leyenda 2, Fundio, Decidió, Afán, Ando Duro, Tíguere, El Cantante, Cocolo and TETA with Medi$en fill in the rest.

JeuzBeats has produced most of it and IntensoGraph has shot most of the videos. That consistency of crew is what a working regional catalogue looks like — the same three or four people, over and over, for years.

Lo Malo Son Ello

The LMSE EP came out as four numbered pieces — Alerta, Demóntalo with Greeny OGF, Por La Vía and Weo Weo — released as visualizers rather than as an album launch.

Cosa Linda followed and reached further than anything since TATE, and Otro Día Más, cut with Épico Gelato over a Topo La Maskara production, is the most recent.

The freestyles

Alongside the singles he releases freestyles, one of them titled after Romans 12:20 — the verse about heaping coals on an enemy’s head by feeding him. Using scripture to answer rivals is an old move in rap and a very Dominican one, and it is a fair sample of how he writes.